In a recording, famed Yiddish poet Rivka Basman wrote that Yiddish was her “neshama shprach”, the “language of her soul.” This is a stunning sentiment, one that conjures up a striking image of Basman, a Holocaust survivor who moved to Israel and taught Hebrew, staying committed to the Yiddish language. As we read this in my literature class with Dr Sheva Zucker, I wondered if Yiddish was my neshama shprach as well.
I immensely enjoyed my classes this summer but I also really struggled. I have never been very good at languages. I took Hebrew classes my entire life up until college and I can barely speak it. When I signed up for Yiddish my Freshman year of college, I did it with the intention of sticking with it; I intended and still intend to become fluent enough to read the literature and eventually speak to my children in it. That is undoubtedly a tall order and I am constantly wondering if it’s actually a reasonable goal for myself.
On the first day of classes this summer I thought I was in way over my head. I had arrived a day late, and hadn’t sat in a Yiddish class in 2 months. Being immersive, my teachers spoke completely in Yiddish and expected constant participation. My literature class was somewhat easier to manage, as most of the time questions were based on reading comprehension, but Grammar class was brutal. I am horrible at grammar even in English and there was nowhere to turn for hints. The only reason I was able to provide an example of the Accusative clause in a sentence was because of a line I had remembered from a song by The Barry Sisters. Getting called on unexpectedly was nerve-wracking but never scary. Both of my teachers, Sheva and Eliezer, were serious but never mean. They never scolded us for not knowing an answer, no matter how obvious it seemed. Even at moments when Eliezer would introduce a new topic and call on me, brain completely empty and addled with fatigue. I never felt he was trying to embarrass me, rather he wanted me to be challenged and improve, and it worked. No matter how slowly and seemingly insignificantly, the improvement is there.
Now, can a language I don’t excel at actually be the language of my soul? Who’s to say, really. I don’t necessarily appreciate the complexities of language and etymology and grammar, but there was something truly magnificent about reading a Sholem Aleichem story in Yiddish for the first time,a notion I had often scoffed at but ended up holding true, and being immersed in Yiddish books and tchotchkes at Yung Yiddish in Tel Aviv (look it up, it’s worth it). Whenever I feel discouraged in my Yiddish studies, which is quite often, it doesn’t take much time for me to see some remnant of Yiddish culture and feel reinvigorated with the need to immerse myself in some aspect of Yiddishism. I feel this inherent pull towards Yiddish, one that remains despite the trials and tribulations throughout my studies, and that feels like proof that I must continue.
