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Yiddishism is a cultural and linguistic movement that advocates and promotes the use of the Yiddish language. It began among in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Mocher Sforim, I. L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem. The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States. The movement declined during much of the 20th century because of the revival of the Hebrew language, and the negative associations with the Yiddish language, before having a renaissance towards the end of the century.
Joshua Mordechai Lifshitz, who is considered the father of Yiddishism and Yiddish lexicography, circulated an essay entitled “The Four Classes” () in 1861 in which he referred to Yiddish as a completely separate language from both German language and Hebrew, and in the European context of his audience, the "mother tongue" of the Jewish people. In the essay, which was eventually published in 1863 in an early issue of the influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser, he contended that the refinement and development of Yiddish were indispensable for the humanization and education of Jews. In a subsequent essay published in the same periodical, he also proposed Yiddish as a bridge linking Jewish and European cultures. Scholar Mordkhe Schaechter characterizes Lifshitz as "the first conscious, goal-oriented language reformer" in the field of Yiddish, and highlights his pivotal role in countering the negative attitudes toward the language propagated within the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment movement:
Although an adherent of the Enlightenment, Lifshitz broke with its sterile anti-Yiddish philosophy, to become an early ideologue of Yiddishism and of Yiddish-language planning. He courageously stood up for the denigrated folk tongue, calling for its elevation and cultivation. He did this in the form of articles in the weekly Kol-mevaser (in the 1860s) and in his excellent Russian-Yiddish and Yiddish-Russian dictionaries ....Schaechter, Mordkhe. "Yiddish language modernization and lexical elaboration", in : Language Reform: History and Future, ed. by Istvan Fodor, Vol. III, Hamburg, 1984, pp. 195–196.Several prominent Yiddish authors also emerged in this time, transforming the perception of Yiddish from a "jargon" of no literary value into an accepted artistic language. Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz are now seen as the basis for classic Yiddish fiction and are thereby highly influential in the Yiddishist movement.
Solomon Birnbaum, Nathan's son, kept the minutes, which were lost or destroyed during World War I. The agenda attempted to avoid politics, but was wide in scope, advocating the promotion of Yiddish teachers, schools, press, literature, and Yiddish theatre. It also sought to reverse the trends among young people toward Hebrew and other local national languages, translate the Bible into the language, and standardize the orthography. Peretz gave an ambitious and authoritative speech about the future aspirations of Yiddish, which was taken with "spiritual hunger" by the attendees, according to Mieses.
Meanwhile, Zionist and religious attendees felt that pro-Yiddish sentiments impacted the revival of Hebrew. Some were deeply upset when Hebrew was deemed a "putrefying cadaver", a relic of the past and of prayer. Religious delegates also felt the conference was too secular.
Nomberg proposed a resolution that was ultimately adopted, which deemed Yiddish was a national language of the Jewish people. It was a compromise view, but still left many dissatisfied. Birnbaum was tapped to run an organization birthed from the conference, which was to promote speakers, publish books, establish schools and courses, promote music and theatre, and plan future international conferences. However, the position was unpaid and fundraising was limited and he turned to Agudat Yisrael to preserve and unify the Jewish people. Asch, Nomberg, Peretz, and Reyzen, and Nomberg toured Jewish communities of Galicia and Bukovina to promote interest in Yiddish language, literature, and culture.
Modern scholarly assessment varies, with Philip Kutner noting the conference was a failure, but also held that it legitimized what was until then "a language of the streets". Emanuel Goldsmith stated in an interview with Jewish Currents that the conference put not Yiddish, but Yiddishism, "on the map": the idea to preserve, sustain, develop, and encourage culture in the language. Ruth Kaswan wrote that the conference "was a landmark occasion in the rise of Jewish consciousness and liberation...and a declaration of solidarity with the Jewish masses that was by definition a revolutionary act." She cited the creation of a school system, and an almost parallel state within the states of Eastern Europe, during the interbellum, as well as a "sense of pride and identity".
According to professor Iosif Vaisman, the conference also increased the prominence of the city of Czernowitz, and inspired similar conferences for Hebrew and Catalan language. He also noted that it led to the creation of secular Jewish schools, teaching of the Yiddish grammar and literature, as well as an increase in Yiddish writers and books. He contends that it helped develop the Bund movement, and discussions on the rights of minorities even influenced the Treaty of Versailles.
The conference was commemorated nearly every decade since it was held, notably in 1928. A fiftieth anniversary gathering was held in Montreal. Gatherings were held around the world for the 100th anniversary, in La Jolla, California, Czernowitz itself, and at York University in Toronto where a conference was held on April 13–14, 2008, titled "Czernowitz at 100: The First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective".
In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat. It became one of the official languages in the Ukrainian People's Republic and in some of the Soviet republics, such as the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. A few of the republics included Yiddish public institutions like post offices and courts. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions. Advanced research institutions and Yiddish publishing houses began to open throughout the Soviet Union. At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged.
The Soviet Union created the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in 1928. Located in the Russian Far East and bordering China, its administrative center was the town of Birobidzhan. There, the Soviets envisaged setting up a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew language, would be the national language, although, concurrently, the Soviets made immigration to Birobidzhan very difficult. Ultimately, the vast majority of the Yiddish-language cultural institutions in the Soviet Union were closed in the late 1930s.
By the mid-1930s, Soviet rule forced scholars to work under intense restrictions. Soviet legislation dictated the content, vocabulary, and spelling of Yiddish scholarship. Before long, leading Yiddish writers and scholars were arrested and executed in 1937. Stalinist orders then gradually closed down the remaining publishing houses, research academies, and schools. Growing persecution of surviving Yiddish authors ultimately came to an end on August 12, 1952. Stalin ordered the execution of twenty-four prominent Yiddish scholars and artists in the Soviet Union all in a single night.
Yiddish also became the language of Jewish labor and political movements in the US. The majority of the Yiddish-speaking political parties from the Pale of Settlement had equivalents in the United States. Notably, even the Zionist parties, like the North-American branch of Poale Zion, published much of their material in Yiddish rather than Hebrew. American Jewish radicals also printed many political newspapers and other materials in Yiddish at the beginning of the 20th century. These included the newspaper The Forward, which began as a socialist endeavor, and the Fraye Arbeter Shtime founded by anarchists.
The Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews who came to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were often felt underpaid and overworked in unsafe conditions, and created many Jewish unions. The United Hebrew Trades, a collective of labor unions founded in 1888, eventually represented over 250,000 members. Forverts, and other leftist Yiddish newspapers, were instrumental in organizing and recruiting for these organizations.
Owing in a large part to the efforts of the Yiddishist movement, Yiddish, before World War II, was becoming a major language, spoken by over 11,000,000 people.Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, .
Additionally, the revival of the Hebrew language as the national language of Israel, caused a significant decline in the use of Yiddish in daily Jewish life. To some, Yiddish was seen as the language of the Jewish people in diaspora and believed its use should be extinguished in the early establishment of Israel. Di Goldene Keyt was a literary journal started by Abraham Sutzkever in 1949 in an attempt to bridge the gap between Yiddish and Hebrew literature. In this journal, Yiddish and Hebrew poems and pieces of literature were published but much of Sutzkever’s work went unrecognized until the 1980s because of the fierce rivalry between Hebraists and Yiddishists.
However, Yiddish did not become a completely “dead” language after the Holocaust. The Yugntruf movement was established for young Yiddish speakers in the mid 20th century, and still continues today. The movement also created the Yiddish Farm in 2012, a farm in New York which offers an immersive education for students to learn and speak in Yiddish. The use of Yiddish is also now offered as a language on Duolingo, used on social media platforms by Jews, and is offered as a language in schools, on an international scale. The use of Yiddish has become a part of the identity of young Jews in America and Australia, ranging from queer to orthodox.
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