HEBREW AND YIDDISH: ONE DOES NOT CHOOSE BETWEEN HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER
L'HEBREU ET LE YIDDISH : ON NE CHOISIT PAS ENTRE SON PERE ET SA MERE
Résumé
Since Hebrew is a Semitic and thus consonantic language, the main difficulty for the Yiddish student who does not know the sacred language is how to decipher Hebrew words. But deciphering Hebrew also implies for the reader to be familiar with day-today Jewish life: the latter is rythmed by a whole range of traditional gestures which appear mostly in Hebrew. What is at stake is not only to explain the words' meaning but also to evoke a customs, a belief, a Talmudic sentence, a Biblical episode, a midrash or a Hassidic tale. That is to show the indefectible link existing between Yiddish, Hebrew and Jewish tradition. In this respect modern Hebrew literature exemplifies this reunification between Yiddish and Hebrew by authors such as Aharon Appelfeld. As far as in his early works, that is short sorties published in the sixties, Aharon Appelfeld makes his characters express themselves in Yiddish through Hebrew. In 2001 he eventually wrote a novel One night after the other where the main part is given to the Yiddish language and culture. The parts are thus inverted: the long despised Yiddish language is raised to the status of a Patriarch language, a sacred tongue, also able to guarantee the sur vival of the Jewish people.
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