Introduction

The contemporary situation of Yiddish is unusual. On the one hand, it is one of dying languages – a consequence of the Shoah – while on the other hand, it is a strongly resurgent language in Jewish Orthodox communities (Haredi or Hasidic Jews), most of all in the USA and Israel. Another peculiarity consists in the fact that the growing numbers of orthodox Yiddish speakers have little, if any, impact on the surrounding language and culture, as they do not mix with the community at large.

The increasingly marked presence of Yiddish in American English (our focus here) can be ascribed, ironically perhaps, to the nostalgia for the lost world of Jewishness. After the European Yiddishland was annihilated by the Germans, the bilingual (Yiddish-American) life of the pre-war immigrants, who had cultivated their original language in newspapers, publications and theatre (nourished by close cooperation with writers and artists from their home countries), gave way to full assimilation which led in time to renewed interest in things Jewish. In 1989, the following upbeat assessment was offered by Gene Bluestein in the introduction to the first edition of his dictionary of Yiddish in American life and literature:

Almost ten years later, in the introduction to the dictionary’s second edition, Bluestein claimed that: