H eadlines
Yiddish Continued from Page 1
being Jewish was expressed in
that language that they had
grown up with in the home.”
Peltz authored “From
Immigrant to Ethnic Culture:
American Yiddish in South
Philadelphia,” an ethnography
of children of immigrants
conducted in the 1980s. He
found, overwhelmingly, that
these Yiddish-speakers were
preserving their language
to preserve their Ashkenazi
Jewish roots.

“What kept Judaism going
was not the shared religion,”
Peltz said. “It was, on one
hand, the sharing of religion,
but secondly, the adapta-
tion to local life: through
the family and through the
neighborhood.” Today, nearly 40 years after
Peltz conducted his ethnog-
raphy, young Yiddish-speakers
are still trying to hold onto
the language and Ashkenazi
culture at its foundation, either
learning the language in adult-
hood or preserving it through
klezmer music. While interest
in the language has remained
steady, Peltz said, a commu-
nity for Yiddishists is severely
lacking. Sunday schools for learning
Yiddish no longer exist, and
the Philadelphia Sholom
Aleichem House, a space for
secular Jews to discuss Jewish
culture — including Yiddish
— disbanded after 50 years of
operation in 2014.

For the next generation
of Yiddish-learners, finding
fellow speakers to practice with
is challenging. It’s a problem
West Philadelphia resident
Estelle Lysell has had for several
months since she completed a
Yiddish intensive course with
the Workers Circle.

“My friends were interested
in Yiddish; I have friends who
learned some Yiddish, but I
don’t have anyone who was
actually speaking,” she said.

“And when you’re learning a
language in a vacuum for your
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Founder Susan Hoffman Watts is looking to bring back programming
at the Community Klezmer Initiative, which has been dormant since the
beginning of COVID.
Courtesy of Alan Lankin
When you’re learning a language in a
vacuum for your own sake, that’s demoralizing.”
ESTELLE LYSELL
own sake, that’s demoralizing.”
Lysell began learning
Yiddish in January 2021, when
she bought a textbook for
herself with which to study.

But she wasn’t a fan of many of
the resources available.

Duolingo, which launched
its Yiddish course in April
2021, helps in teaching phrases
and bolstering prior knowl-
edge of a language, but isn’t a
worthwhile tool for someone
starting at square one, she
said. Textbooks and online
courses are expensive for
20-somethings. “For other languages, the
revival projects are teaching
children and
elemen- tary schools for free how to
speak the language,” Lysell
said. “With Yiddish, it’s just
college students paying for it
themselves.” But just as Lysell is looking
for communities with which
to learn the language, pre-ex-
isting Yiddish institutions are
having trouble attracting a
younger crowd.

More than 20 years ago,
Haverford College professors
Seth Brody, Dan Gillis and Mel
Santer — all of whom have
died — founded the Yiddish
Culture Festival, a convening of
Yiddish-speakers for program-
ming, such as poetry readings,
film screenings and klezmer
performances. The festival’s
attendance has held steady
at 20-30 attendees, many of
whom are older community
members. “There were very few
students on Haverford’s
campus who, in fact, were
enticed by this,” said Jeffrey
Tocosky-Feldman, a Haverford
mathematics professor and
organizer of the Yiddish
Culture Festival.

Two decades after the
group’s founding,
the demographics haven’t changed,
he said. Recently, a few
younger community members
have attended programs, but
no more students. Because
the festival is organized by
professors, organizers don’t
have as much time to invest in
publicizing events or drawing
in newcomers, something
Tocosky-Feldman wants to do.

“Pretty much every year, I
go on the Haverford website,
and I look up the Jewish
student organizations and try
JEWISH EXPONENT
and contact whoever’s the head
of them,” he said. “And many
times, the person listed there
has graduated.”
Susan Hoffman Watts, a
fourth-generation klezmer
musician, has had similar
problems attracting
an audience to the Community
Klezmer Initiative, particularly
after COVID.

In December 2019, after
years of trying to organize
events with a critical mass
audience, Watts finally had
success with a “Yiddish
Cocktails” event, packing 80
people into the Philadelphia
Folksong Society building on
Ridge Avenue.

“Was [the Yiddish] terrible
and awful and not great? I
mean, it was; it was crazy,”
Watts said. “But people heard
Yiddish.” After COVID, however,
the Community Klezmer
Initiative has mostly laid
dormant. Watts is hoping to
resurrect programming there
but is having trouble gaining
momentum again. It’s a partic-
ular shame, she said, because
of the welcoming environment
of klezmer spaces.

“One of the things about
the klezmer scene is that it’s
very open-arms, accepting and
loving ... and no matter what ...

you are welcomed with open
arms, loved and respected,”
Watts said. “I think that
people really respond to that
openness.” As Yiddish institutions
work to get the word out to
interested parties, individuals
are dreaming up their own
spaces to practice the language
in community with others.

Lysell is inspired by a
community garden she volun-
teers at, where many of the
other volunteers
speak Spanish. By immersing herself
in an environment where the
language was spoken, she’s
begun to pick it up herself.

She believes the same could
be done with Yiddish, inviting
a group to garden or to make
Shabbat dinner together, to
“limp through sentences” of
English and Yiddish, “slowly
growing our vocabulary.”
“It’d be really cool to see
something like that — active
community organizing,” Lysell
said. l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0741
JANUARY 6, 2022
13