Eitan: Welcome to the MetaShtetl, this is Eitan Binstock. I inherited the Yiddish language and culture from my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and I am interested in exploring the way it’s been flourishing in the 21st century. Specifically, how technology is being used to spread and proliferate Yiddish worldwide. Before I welcome my next guest, please note the full translations of the podcast can be viewed on my blog themetashtetl.com, feel free to follow along, and thank you for coming along on this adventure with me. And now for my next guest, Dr. Mordchai Yishovsky, General Secretary of the World Congress for Jewish Culture and Inspector of Yiddish Studies at the Israel Ministry of Education, as we switch to the language we both hold dear. Dr. Yishovsky, our honored guest, thank you very much for participating in the podcast. Please inrroduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your personal history. Where are you from? Where did you study and what is your profession? What role did Yiddish play in your childgood years?
Dr. Mordechai Yishovsky: My Name is Mordechai Yishkovsky, I have dedicated my life for Yiddish, I have taken up various official titles, I was from 1992 the General Secretary of the World Congress for Yiddish Culture, then for 14 years I as the Inspector for Yiddish studies at the Israel Ministry of Education, from 2014 I was the Academic Director of the International Yiddish Center of the Jewish World Congress, but most importantly, I am lecturer of Yiddish language and literature and folklore, an interpreter, and a Yiddish writer. I come from Ukraine. I was born in the city of Vintse in the center of the old community in the heart of the Podolye neighborhood, and my early childhood years were also spent in a very important city in Yiddish history called Berdichev. The main thing is that these two cities – Vintse and Berdichev – are my homeland. For me Yiddish is a heard language, in my generation, the children already didn’t speak Yiddish and their parents already spoke little Yiddish. My parents both understand Yiddish because they both come from Yiddish-language homes, but between them they spoke only Russian. Yiddish is for me a heard language from grandparents, and I have also described it that as a child, my grandparents would take me with them every warm evening on the boulevard or to the park, where older Jews would gather, and I can’t explain it logically or rationally but from my early childhood years I was simply enchanted by their Yiddish speaking. I understood then very little, and I don’t know why but I could sit that way for hours watching their faces and simply listening to them. When I was 9 or 10, I decided that I already understand everything they were saying – the older Jews. And I simply fell in love with the melody of their speech, in the general intonations of their speech, and therefore, I got the language from listening, simply pit. When I was 15 years old, in a bookstore I saw a small book of sings with Yiddish letters. I could not yet read but I knew they were Yiddish letters, and I bought it, then I found in my grandfather’s old Siddur the Yiddish alphabet, and I started scratching together nose to nose, and that way I learned to read Yiddish. The little book was a songbook, by Shikedriz, and I know the songs by heart to this day. I read them for so long until I learned them all by heart. From then I started buying the only two press houses that existed by us, they were the Moskow Literary Journal Soviet Sheinland, and the Israeli Communist Newspaper The Way. I used to travel once a month to the kiosk and buy those two things, and that way I integrated myself into reading Yiddish. When in my circles it became known that I was interested in Yiddish, and that was the time of the 70s, 80s, when the generation of Yiddish speaking Jews started leaving for their eternal rest, and their children already didn’t’ know how to read Yiddish, so I would get called in and told – the father or mother left Yiddish books and Journals, do you want them? Take them away. So I would take them all away and collect them and that’s how I collected my huge library. When people ask me sometimes where is your Yiddish knowledge from, and I feel like it’s worth making a joke, I say that it comes from the attics and cellars, because that’s where they had kept all their Yiddish books and Journals – either in their attic or their cellar. And that’s how I collected my library.
Eitan: That is truly a library that was created organically, slowly, and I think that gives it an authenticity which other libraries do not have. Your joke about cellars is interesting because Yiddish books were shoved into forgotten corners, hidden in darkness – but not forgotten. People understood that these items had worth, even if they themselves could not benefit from them. For context, which other languages do you speak?
Dr. Mordechai Yishovsky: I speak 6 languages, which are Yiddish, Hebrew, German, English, Russian and Ukrainian, I can also read Polish but speaking is harder for me. And each language resides in its own corner within me, Yiddish is first and foremost the language of the soul, the language of my work. Hebrew is for me a daily language, and my lectures are bilingual which is Hebrew with Yiddish, sometimes I also give lectures in Russian, and also in German; in English less so but from time to time I lecture in English, and the lately with all my friends from Ukraine I speak and write in Ukrainian, and Russian is the language of my family. Each language has its own role by me and never has one language disturbed another, on the contrary, I like combinations of languages and sometimes I can start a sentence in one language in finish it in another language, and I very much like language games and always have since early childhood and onwards.
Eitan: Every language adds richness to every other language, perhaps. To be able to understand things in several languages demonstrates an understanding about perspective. Can you talk ab it more about your work in Yiddish and how you used your library to build up a career in Yidish?
Dr. Mordechi Yishovsky: Afterwards I started reading everything I could get in Yiddish, and started simply going around in the homes of older Jews and record them and write down their memories. The raisins [nuggets] of their languages, the little words, slang, songs, stories that I that they told me, and that way I simply immersed myself in the world of Yiddish folklore as was most important, and later in literature. When I finished school at age 17, I went to university in Moscow, it was an institute for steel trains. And my second academic degree, my MA, is in engineering and economic of steel trains, which is very far from what I occupied myself with my whole life. I worked in this field, in the ministry of steel trains for three years, which was the law after finishing university, and in 1986 in the Moscow Journal Soviet Union, the seventh number was for the first time entirely compiled by young authors. And I got an opportunity from that journal, and from then I started writing stories in Yiddish. Of course it was just the first attempt of my literary pen, but bit by bit I started writing stories in Yiddish, and once a year, every 7th number in 1986, 87, 88, 89, it was entirely complied by young writers and that was a rare thing in the Yiddish world, because I think it was a phenomenon that one needs to study and analyze because in no country where there was a free Jewish education, did there arise a new generation of Yiddish literaries. Especially in the Soviet Union, where almost for 50 years we didn’t see a Yiddish study book and we didn’t know what a Yiddish school is and so on, there sprouted a group of young people, all of whom were born after the war, who found their expressive outlet by writing in Yiddish prose, poems, dramas, and so on. And from 1987 I worked in the Soviet Union for two years I was a full time employee and I’m very thankful for those two years because there I simply acquired a lot of knowledge, and there I met the Yiddish writer, perhaps the last one from that generation of Yiddish writers who were raised in Yiddish. Many of them were survivors of the Goulag, or the concentration camps, arrested under the Stalin persecution of Jewish culture and simply working with these people and being with them ever day and becoming friendly with them, that very much influenced me and was one of the Soviet Yiddish literature, it’s one of the most important subjects in my analytical work, I occupy myself with this already for many years, and I can only specify certain names such as Chaim Beyder, Boris Magilner, Yosef Shuster, Shmuel Gordon, Hershel Polanker, Yosef Bourg, Alexander Lizen, and other with whom I was friendly and from who I acquired much knowledge. In 1986 began what was called Perestroyka in the Soviet Union, there came Gorbachev and the ideology clamp was a little loosened, and there began to spout here and there Yiddish nationalist movements. With some of my friends we initiated the first -after 50 years of dessert- seminar for Jewish potential teachers that we called Yiddish and Yiddishkeyt in the Soviet Union. I created a contact, it’s a long history, but in short I created a contact with the head at the time of the Yiddish department in the Bar Ilan University, Professor Gershon Weiner, and in a very unlikely way through various channels we succeeded to bring to Moscow 5 professors rom Bar Ilan – there were not yet diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel, and the 10th of July 1989 we also brough 56 potential Yiddish teachers from 18 cities. Everything was of course very illegal, and the 10th of July 1989 began the first monthly seminar for Yiddish teachers in the Soviet Union after almost 50 years of dessert of this field. And from then we held 17 such seminars which I directed later on from Israel because on the 30th of August 1989 I immigrated to Israel.
Eitan: Arriving in Israel, culture was so precious to those who understood its orth. How did your work with Yiddish develop from then on?
Dr. Mordechai Yishovky: When I arrived in Israel, of course everyone would say to me that Yiddish is by us Muktza (forbidden) and Yiddish doesn’t work in Israel, and we must for get Yiddish, but I was used to going against the grain. And every year in Israel, and I have been living here for 35 years almost, every year I dedicated myself only with Yiddish, not with anything else, only with Yiddish. First of all I arrived in Bar Ilan University to study for my doctorate in Yiddish literature, and in 1997 I got my doctorate title, the supervisor of my doctorate was the authority on the folkloric studies in Israel, Professor Dovnoy, may he rest in peace, and then subject of my doctorate was the artistic language development of the Yiddish historical novel. And as I previously said, I already worked many years as the General Secretary of the World—for Yiddish Culture, from 2001, for 14 years as the Inspector of Yiddish Studies in the Israel Ministry of Education and then as an academic director at the International Yiddish Center at the Yiddish World Congress. I also taught at several universities, Univeristy of Be’e Sheva, Tel Aviv University, but the main thing and what I believe is my biggest achievement, is that I succeeded in building a net – my private net – of courses about Yiddish literature and culture in various cities in Israel, where during these years, already more than 2 years, tens of thousands of Israelis have studied, and these are courses that come forth in the prestige of the biggest auditoriums in the country, in the Haifa Auditorium, in the Teatron Yerushalayim, - the Jerusalem Theater, in the Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, and also in other large auditoriums, and I believe that my most important achievement, simply to bring Yiddish culture to thousands of Israelis who were simply cut off from the culture of their roots and they were raised here in this atmosphere of ani Yiddish anti diaspora, and so on. And I believe that that’s the most important thing. But if you ask me what is the secret of the success of these courses, I will answer this way: just like in Sholem Aleichem’s well known storytelling of Kasrilivke Restaurants – when one tell the lady she should already bring something to eat, go and bring already, she says what is to bring, one needs to know what to bring. Un that’s the secret – it’s not enough to say one must learn Yiddish, Yiddish is important and so on. One must answer what for – what should convince modern people to go and dedicate time and money and enery and effort to learn Yiddish, and the culture in Yiddish, if he can do the same in another language and study another language. One must give specific answers to the answer to the question: for what purpose should we have Yiddish in the 21st century? And I outlined, for myself and for my students and listeners, I outlined 5 answers for this question. The first answer: Yiddish is -and when I say Yiddish I mean the whole complex of the Yiddish culture – so first of all Yiddish is a medium of self identity. It is a medium to confront the national and cultural assimilation. It’s a type of Mechitza (Divider) a barrier against the national cultural assimilation and that is one of the most important components in today’s say to formulate Jewish identity. The second answer is that Yiddish was created as a daily language; it’s a language of daily use in order not desecrate the Holy language, but in the complex of the Yiddish culture, one cannot understand anything without knowledge of the Yiddish tradition. Meaning, Yiddish culture is a type of bridge between Judaism, national Judaism, traditional Judaism, religious Judaism, and the secular worldliness. Meaning, between Yiddish national, religious traditional values and worldly values. In other words, between the two sides of our national existence, between Judaism and Personhood. The third point is that Yiddish culture eternalized in itself the method of Kehila life. Because in the last few hundred years, the center of Jewish life was the Kehila. And the Kehila created in the past few hundred years for us a collective psychology; Yiddish is so rich with sentences and phrases that illustrate this collective psychology. Yiddish contains within it to this day these concepts like – how will I be able to look these people in the eye, what the city will say, how will I go out, and the main thing I the moral code of personal conduct and behavior: Se Past Nisht (It doesn’t match [who we are], it does fit). These values are going away from our life and it’s very important to study the Yiddish culture to remember and to eternalize the values of the Jewish Kehila life of the Jewish collective of Jewish unity.
Eitan: When I think about Yiddish as a part of my identity, I never thought through what that means and how deep it is. It affects not only how I think, but also how I act, how I was raised, how I learn, what I think of others, and so on. It’s who we are in the blood [on the inside], so to speak. Yiddish is our identity because it articulates our memories whether we realize that or not. Speaking of memories, can you tell a little about your Yiddish stories and how you came to write them?
Dr. Mordechai Yishovsky: For years I was so busy with my pedagogy and interpretations that I simply neglected the literary creations in Yiddish because everything I wrote was articles on literary analysis and folkloric studies, but these last years I refreshed my literary creativity and in 2023 my book of Yiddish stories was published, which is called A Bridge Over The River of Memory and soon the Hebrew translation of the book is coming out with the same title in Hebrew, and in the introduction to the Hebrew translation I have given my answer to why I write specifically in Yiddish, and I can here read my introduction translated from Hebrew in to Yiddish: Many people have asked me and I have often also asked myself, why do you write in Yiddish? In any event, your work will be translated into Hebrew and possibly in the future into other languages. What purpose is there in doing a three part work? After all, how many people can read Yiddish in this day? Write in Hebrew or Russian. When I need to answer this question, I fee in my heart a deep pressure. It’s hard for me to explain my stubborn insistence to write in Yiddish through rational logic. I tried writing in other languages, but that’s not it. The issue is tightly bound to a whole host of feelings because Yiddish for me is not another language, it’s a way of life. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a forum for expression. It’s a supportive expressionism. It’s a heartfelt intimate cry. That’s the intonation which has no parallel in any other language. This is a tear that spills out from the eye at an unexpected moment. It’s a laugh that consumes you entirely and for so long until tears rise in the eyes. This is a caress over your soul. It’s an eternal welcome back home to the childhood, to the previous generations. It’s a melody that intoxicates the senses. It’s a warmth in the heart. It’s a magical softness. A clever wink. It's a joke between many generations which is expressed in a fantastic treasure of spoken words and spoken art. It’s a life’s joy overcomes suffering and hardship. It’s an unfettered power which makes survival possible during the most challenging of moments. It’s an efficiency to sweeten the suffering un hardships with a smile and humor. But the most important thing, is that Yiddish is an eternal treasure of memory – personal, national, and universal. Yiddish is language in which the majority of the Jewish nation lived, breathed, laughed, cried, and created throughout centuries. It’s the language carried on the lips of most of the martyrs of the Holocaust as they took their final steps. It’s the only living thing remaining of them. It’s an eternal monument for millions of our holy souls. That’s why, when I’m asked why have I dedicated my life to Yiddish, why do I write in Yiddish, the answer is a singular one: in their memory.
Eitan: In honor of the memory of our holy souls, indeed. Do you have thoughts about the connection between the memories of a foregone world, and today’s world and the future?
Dr. Mordechai Yishovsky: The Yiddish culture eternalized the literature and folklore the unbreakable connection between the Jewish nation and the Land of Israel. The longing for Zion is one of the most important theme of Jewish creation, both in folklore and in literature; our children and grandchildren who are here in the Jewish land, I believe that if they ever want to know what their grandparents and great grandparents felt in the abandoned towns of eastern Europe, is that they spoke the works The Land of Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, with tears and shudders. Our children and grandchildren will want know and feel it, our Yiddish literature will give them that opportunity. And the last, next, fifth point, and to familiarize oneself with Yiddish literature and not full time Holocaust studies. And I give a lot of lectures at yad Vashem to various groups, and it makes me happy that in today’s day, every course includes lessons about Yiddish culture because in order to understand what was lost, what world was destroyed, we must understand what world existed before the Holocaust. Who was the singular Jew who was shot in Babi Yar, or burnt in Treblinka – what language did he speak, what newspaper did he read, what type of education did he have, from what did he support himself, in which theaters did he go, what was his point of view in life – all these questions can be answered through Yiddish culture, and especially Yiddish literature. Most importantly, through these five answers I succeeded in laying out a concept underlining Yiddish culture. I believe that without that, we can’t find the answer to the question why do we need this, so it’s wasted work and that’s the principle which I worked out throughout my pedagogical career.
Eitan: Dr Mordeche Yishovsky, I thank you warmly for your thoughts which are poetically expressed. Few people in todays’ day speak Yiddish because even fewer understood the worth of a language which is not just translated words, but rather a collective memory of a living nation. I wish you luck with the upcoming Hebrew version of your book, and peace for you and for all of Israel.