Yiddish

The most widely spoken Jewish language on the eve of the Holocaust Yiddish continues to play a significant role in Jewish life today from Hasidim for whom it is a language of daily life to avant-garde performers political activists and LGBTQ writers turning to Yiddish for inspiration. <em>Yiddish: Biography of a Language</em> presents the story of this centuries-old language the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews from its origins to the present. <p/>Jeffrey Shandler tells the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile revealing surprising insights through a series of thematic chapters. He addresses key aspects of Yiddish as the language of a diasporic population whose speakers have always used more than one language. As the vernacular of a marginalized minority Yiddish has often been held in low regard compared to other languages and its legitimacy as a language has been questioned. But some devoted Yiddish speakers have championed the language as embodying the essence of Jewish culture and a defining feature of a Jewish national identity. Despite predictions of the demise of Yiddish-dating back well before half of its speakers were murdered during the Holocaust-the language leads a vibrant evolving life to this day.<br>