Naftali Ejdelman Translation, Episode 8:

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, Naftuli Eydelman, our honored guest, thank you very much for participating in the podcast. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your personal history. 

Naftuli: I’m called Naftuli Ejdelman, I grew up in the Bronx, I’m already the third generation to have grown u in the Bronx – my mother and my grandmother both grew up in the Bronx – I am from a Yiddishist family – the Schaechter Family – my mother is Sore-Rukhl Schaechter she is the editor of the Yiddish Forward, and my grandfather was Mordche Scheachter who was a famous linguist and Yiddishist.

Eitan: ok, a proud Yiddishist family and a proud Bronx family. I hope we’ll also get to hear a little about the fourth generation of your family which is being raised in the Bronx – meaning your children. But first, what role did Yiddish play in your childhood years? Did you study Yiddish outside the home as well? 

Naftuli: In my childhood years, Yiddish played a large role, I spoke Yiddish at home with my brothers and my parents, and with my cousins, uncles, and aunts. And my mother also wanted me to have friends with whom I could speak in Yiddish, so she founded a program that was called Pripetchik which met every Sunday and we played, it was a type of children’s group for children up to, let’s say, 9 years old, and every week we read Yiddish poems and wrote our own poems, and for fun we played with children from other Yiddishist homes. And we also went every year to the Yiddish Vokh, and that is in upstate New York where hundreds of Yiddishists gather already for the past fifty years. And we speak only Yiddish there, so I have a friend from the Yiddish Vokh summers from my earliest years.

Eitan: and nowadays, is Yiddish language or culture connected to your main career? Or do you feel that Yiddish and your profession are separate channels in both your mind and your life? 

Naftuli: I think that everything I’ve ever done as work in my life has some kind of connection to Yiddish or it comes in useful. I’m now working at a foundation that supports Jewish institutions in America and in Israel – not Yiddish language organizations – but I think I was hired because I have a lot of experience in fundraising from large foundations just like theirs so I have a lot of sensitivity towards the organizations that ask us for money. It’s called Maimonides Fund, where I work. When I was hired I was first asked if I would be prepared to work there even if they never supported Yiddish language organizations, so I think it doesn’t play a direct role, but not infrequently do people have questions about Yiddish which everyone knows that I am the Yiddishist there at Maimonides Fund, so it works out quite frequently that I speak about it, and I have also for many years been selling watches together with my father. In the stores where they sell watches are many Chassidim and also one family of Carpathian Jews who are not Chassidim but they also Yiddish-speaking. So in the watch sales it also comes in useful to speak Yiddish.

Eitan: Interesting, so you’re not working with Yiddish right now, but your experience with Yiddish has opened doors professionally and helped build your career, even if not with Yiddish directly. What other languages do you speak? Do they interweave with Yiddish? 

Naftuli:  Other language. I speak mainly Yiddish English and Hebrew, which Hebrew I studied my whole life at Jewish day school and I also lived for a year in Israel with my wife. And I learn a little Spanish when I was in middle school. On my own I tried to learn a little Russioan and a little Polish. I thought maybe these languages will help with my Yiddish. And my father speak both Russian and Polish so I have with whom to speak both of those. Do they weave together with Yiddish? I would say not really. 

Eitan: ok so what do you want people to know about Yiddish, that maybe they do not already know

Naftuli: I would like people to know a few facts about Yiddish. First, for those who say that Yiddish is not practical, or let’s say, it’s more practical to speak Hebrew for example, they should know that between children under three years old in New York State – it’s not New York City it’s New York State - Yiddish is the third most widely spoken language, in the whole state, for children under six years old. The first is English, the second is Spanish, and the third is Yiddish. So the truth is that Yiddish is a very practical language. Whoever works in medicine or in other fields where you have interactions with the general public, especially in the city – in all the hospitals one sees many Yiddish-speaking Jews – and especially children, and there is a more probability that the children will not speak English. I think that Yiddish will actually be very practical in New York in the coming years. And I also want people to understand that for an American Jew who knows something about Judaism, maybe knows some Hebrew and speaks good English, there is no language in the world that is easier to learn than Yiddish. This is something I know from teaching at the Yiddish Farm and other contexts, if one can create an atmosphere where you hear Yiddish all day, it’s called immersion, one can learn and be able to have conversations in Yiddish after two weeks. Especially those who we say have some kind of Jewish upbringing. And of course because Yiddish is a Germanic language, which has a lot in common with English, so it’s very useful [knowledge of English is very useful for learning Yiddish]. And I think if people knew how easy it is, more people would undertake it.

Eitan: You bring forth several new facts which I did not know about and until now now one has said on the podcast. First, the idea that it is quite easy to learn Yiddish. I learned it as a child from my mother so the question of how easy or difficult a language it is, was never a question for me. But people really should know that it isn’t such a difficult undertaking if they are interested. And secondly, the fact that Yiddish is the third most spoken language in the State of New York for children under three. This is big news for me, I was raised in Yiddish here in New York and I speak Yiddish with my family but almost not at all outside my family, besides the podcast. As a child I did not have any Yiddish-speaking friends, so it's hard to believe that so many children are going around speaking Yiddish, so close to me even though I never met them. It’s very interesting. Can you now tell us a little about your children and how Yiddish plays a role in your family life as an adult? 

Naftuli: Today I have, thank God, three children, one is very young – just born a month ago – but with the other two I speak only Yiddish and they speak only Yiddish between each other. Even though both of them speak English, they still speak Yiddish better than English. My eldest is five and a half years old, and my middle is two and a half. At home with my wife I speak half in English and half in Yiddish, when the children are in the room we speak mostly Yiddish, and I live a few blocks away from my parents, so in my life I probably speaker more Yiddish than English on a daily basis.

Eitan: and do your children go to Yiddish school? 

Naftuli: When me eldest, Moshe Lazer, was six months old, the Covid pandemic broke out, so we took him out of his daycare. So he was simply with me and my wife and my parents alone. And he learned to speak such a beautiful Yiddish – he learned to speak quite early – maybe a little bit older than a year old, and when we spoke about sending him once again to a daycare, it seemed to me a shame to send him someplace where he would forget his beautiful Yiddish and it will be entirely in English, I was afraid he would come home and answer in English, so we considered sending him to a Chassidic program for a summer and we had other friends who also are raising their children in Yiddish and they did not want to send their children to a Chassidic community, so we discussed with them maybe we can do something together here in the Bronx, and it will be easier than commuting to Monsey, and at the beginning there were only two children – my son and their son – and we called it Enge-Benge-Land which references the children’s group that my grandfather led for my mother’s generation of Yiddishists who also lived in the Bronx, so I thought of it as a continuation of those years, once again in the Bronx, neighbors who speak Yiddish with their children and create for them a children’s world in Yiddish. And the second year more families came, one family came from Jeruslem and lived with us for the whole year in our house, and sent their children with us, and there were at that time six full-time children, and another three part-timers. That was the high point of Enge-Benge, it’s wasn’t really a bi-liguial program, it was only Yiddish; we did not use other languages at all in Enge-Benge, and it was outstanding. And I very much miss those days when I led Enge-Benge. We did it for three years, and I think at the end it was simply too difficult to find teachers and I myself found a job that pays better and we have a lot of expenses and it was simply difficult to live from Enge Benge. But the children who were together at Enge Benge are still very close and I think we will see the benefits from this for many years.

Eitan: That is a Jewish approach – if it doesn’t exist, one must create it. Maybe Enge-Benge will continue in a new way in the future. Do you enjoy Yiddish? Why and When? Do you have a favorite word or expression?  

Naftuli: Yes I very much enjoy Yiddish. When I try to read – when I have a chance to read a little – I try to read in Yiddish but with three small children it turns out to be difficult to find time to read. My favorite expression is perhaps, A Kotel Maaroves vi ale Kotel Maaroves. (“A Western Wall like all Western Walls.”

Meaning, the truest or most authentic.)

Eitan: Do you think that these days the general interest in learning Yiddish is growing or shrinking? Do you make use of technology to reach people all over the world in Yiddish? 

Naftuli: I don’t teach Yiddish professionally so I am not sure whether it’s multiplying or diminishing, my impression is that those who become a true part of the living Yiddish-speaking world are a smaller contingent than once upon a time. I’m thinking about, for example, when I was younger, every year at the Yiddish Vokh (annual total immersion Yiddish family week-long camp experience) there used to come many new faces who were studying in universities, and I had the impression that there were many advanced students in the Yivo program, for example. My impression is that today, what we call an advanced level is not what we used to called advanced ten or twenty years back. So, I think that of those who study truly good Yiddish the contingent is indeed shrinking, but it’s truly possible that because of technology there exist more people who are learning a little bit of Yiddish, of that I am not certain.

Eitan: So what is changing or developing in the Yiddish world in your opinion? 

Naftuli: Once, it was thought that the Yiddishist world - as it’s called - and the Chassidic world are completely separate, and now we know that it is not so separate: the Chassidic newspapers look into the Yiddishist dictionaries in order to know how to say certain terms in Yiddish, and in the Yiddishist events these days a lot of Chassidim attend, and I think that the more we unify these two worlds the better it will be, because both sides have something very important to contribute to the other, and I think the Yiddishist world is actually missing Yiddish knowledge – from the Torah and Yiddishkeyt [aka Judaism], and also a natural fluency of the language, and the Chassidim are missing an understanding of Yiddish literature and history, and simply the grammatical rules and I think that we should work together as much as possible.

Eitan: Another new idea on the podcast for the first time. Even the Jews who speak Yiddish are not the same as one another, there are various groups with very different perspectives on Judaism, religion, tradition, culture, and so on, but all have something to contribute to the Yiddish world. All are valuable for Yiddish culture. How else do you unify your various interests and various projects in the Yiddish world? 

Naftuli: When I founded the Yiddish Farm together with Yisroel Bass, that was in 2010, I was inspired by other organizations who had weaved together Yiddishkeyt with nature or with working the land, or with climate action. I saw that this is a popular method to reach Jews who were looking for an interesting way to develop their Yiddish/Jewish identity. And I thought this could be very useful with learning Yiddish because people are interested in living together with other young Jews, on a farm, immersed in nature, they had probably enjoyed summer camp when they had been children. And a continuation of an experience like that as an adult [was appealing]. So, we decided to weave together these two experiences, and I think it was very successful. People came from all over the country to the farm to learn Yiddish o to improve upon their Yiddish, and since soon, there are not many opportunities for people to use the language on a daily basis outside the Chassidic world, it was a beautiful opportunity for people like that.  

Eitan: very special: I have been to the Yiddish farm, my family and I once planted blueberry bushes, and a few months later we went back to pick the blueberries. It’s a special place. What do you know about who studies Yiddish nowadays? 

Naftuli: Truth be told, I am not currently working as a Yiddish teacher, and when I did it was with small children who knew Yiddish from home. So, I’m not so familiar with the audience who comes to learn Yiddish nowadays as adults.

Eitan: ok so from your perspective, what do you think about the direction Yiddish is going in?  

Naftuli: Because of the average age of today’s Yiddish speakers is very young, the language is going to develop very quickly and it will change in the coming generations, I believe. I believe - there are many Yiddishists who do not accredit the Chassidic Yiddish and they feel it is mixed with English too much – I do not agree. I believe that we indeed did see instances, particularly in my generation or earlier, in which many of the verbs and adjectives were simply replaced with English words. But as much as I have seen lately of the Chassidim, I haven’t seen that this gets worse, and on the other have my impression is actually that the Yiddish has improved lately, so I’m very optimistic about Yiddish in America in the coming 100 years.

Eitan: one can acknowledge that Yiddish always incorporated words from the gentile languages in the countries where Yiddish-speakers have lived. It includes influences from many European languages for example, so now that many Yiddish speakers live in America, English is mixing into Yiddish as well, and that does not make it a lesser great Yiddish – it’s the same concept as always. 

Naftuli Ejdelman, thank you for your optimism, for your time, and your thoughts, I will also be optimistic and hope that the Yiddish language and culture is gaining strength year by year