Yiddish class keeps the language alive

Director Steven Spielberg helped lead revival

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Nowadays, it is commonplace for people to accompany bagels with a "schmear" or to comment on the "chutzpah" of an acquaintance, but for some, the words are part of a language that serves as a sense of identity and history.

Each month, members of Yiddish Vinkle, a Yiddish class sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada, and the Yiddish 1 and 2 classes get together to speak and learn to read Yiddish at the Temple Beth Sholom, 10700 Havenwood Lane.

Jeannie Arin, who, though born in the United States, learned Yiddish before learning to speak English, teaches the classes. She said her main goal is to teach students to read Yiddish.

"It's one thing to speak (Yiddish), but you'll never really have the concept of literature unless you learn to read the language," Arin said.

Yiddish is a 1,000-year-old language derived primarily from Middle German. Yiddish was not confined to one area and can vary depending on where the speaker or the speaker's relatives are from, Arin said.

"It's a fusion language," she said.

Often, it is confused with Hebrew.

"They are two different languages," Arin said.

The use of Yiddish in the United States declined after the closing of Yiddish theater before World War II. Arin said Yiddish saw a revival in Jewish day schools when director Steven Spielberg donated money to teach the language once more.

Arin said there have been Yiddish classes for several years in Las Vegas, but four years ago, the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada took over Yiddish Vinkle. The word "vinkle" translates to "corner" in English. The other two classes are sponsored by the Temple Beth Sholom and the Brandeis Women's Club and also are taught by Arin.

Arin said it is important to learn to read Yiddish because meaning often is lost in translation.

"You can say in Yiddish one word what would take a paragraph in English," she said.

Arin used the example of the word "mensch." If someone said, "You are a mensch," Arin explained, it would mean the person is charitable, an upstanding person and gives from the heart.

"Yiddish poetry, if translated, loses the depth of meaning of that work," she said.

Arin said because of the emotion of the language, many great comedians have come from the Yiddish stage.

"You wonder what it is. It's because there's such a sensitivity to the emotional spectrum," Arin said.

Irv Herman, who is in Yiddish Vinkle, learned to speak Yiddish before English in the Bronx, N.Y.

"The use of the Yiddish language is to recapture a life in which you were younger and more innocent," he said. "You talk about food and you talk about people. You remember epithets that when transliterated sound harsh, but they were very endearing."

Herman said Arin teaches the students the history of the language in addition to reading. He said Yiddish publications are all but gone in the United States.

"Yiddish is almost like a worn out railroad trestle that every once in a while a railroad car rolls on," he said.

The Yiddish language is an umbilical cord to your youth and heritage, Herman added.

"The use of Yiddish is selfish and vain because it makes me feel good that I am what I am because of what I was," he said. "It's essential to my being."

Yiddish 1 meets from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, while Yiddish 2 meets from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month.Yiddish Vinkle meets from 10 a.m. to noon on the fourth Wednesday of each month.

For more information, contact Temple Beth Sholom at 804-1333.