Viva Dead Languages: Help Save Yiddish
(Yiddish lives)
A recent article in the Washington Jewish Week reports that the University of Maryland in College Park may discontinue its Yiddish language courses after a 30 year run. As a campus with one of the most vibrant Jewish student populations in the U.S., UMD’s decision carries a special symbolic weight. Many Yiddish language activists and supporters are discouraged by the impending decision, which the UMD Meyerhoff Jewish Studies Center director and history professor Hayim Lapin attributes to general university-wide budget cuts. If you would like to show your support for the continuation of Yiddish study, please visit http://www.jewishstudies.umd.edu/academic/YiddishLetter.html, and sign on to the petition to save the Yiddish program at the University of Maryland.
Truly upsetting news. However one cannot ignore the fact that Yiddish was put at a priorital disadvantage before “budgetary constraints” led to this move. It says in the article that Jewish studies majors “must be proficient in third-year Hebrew, which means most of them must take three full years of that language. Yiddish is not offered as a substitute language.”
Without equal status, it comes as no surprise that the University finds no problem with cutting the language from its offerings. Without equal academic status with Hebrew, Yiddish will continue to be treated as less worthy and less important. Jewish Studies departments, like that at Maryland, need to understand that they are not Hebrew studies departments, nor Israeli studies department. Once they can do this, maybe they will be able to stop shafting worthy subjects with second-class status which make them vulnerable to being tossed out of academia all together.
—Yisroel · December 1st, 2009 at 12:30 am
I am student at the University of Maryland, with ties to the Jewish Studies Department, though I do not take any classes through the department.
The University is indeed in a huge budget crisis– some departments are being cut entirely, for instance, the Classics department is in danger of ceasing to exist as early as next Fall. The Assistant Provost of Diversity was removed from his position. The staff at the Meyerhoff Center is incredibly supportive of all Jewish life on campus, not just that officially endorsed by the Department. If Lapin is considering cutting the Yiddish program, I would guess that this is because enrollment for these particular classes are in a decline. With budget cuts happening all over the University, it is unsurprising that the department may cut an entire portion of their program.
I am not suggesting that the program SHOULD be cut, to the contrary, as a non-Yiddish speaker, I recognize the cultural and historic importance of the language, and wish I had proficiency in the language.
Decisions must be made; programs are being cut all over campus. Right or wrong, the Hebrew programs are easier to fund and more popular with the student population, and thus hold a higher economic priority.
I don’t think the individual can put a price on learning or knowledge. However, when one runs a department, the needs of the entire program need be considered over one specific part of the program.
—deborah · December 1st, 2009 at 12:47 am
Yisroel-
How can you suggest that Yiddish is equal to Hebrew in importance to Jewish studies? Hebrew links all of Jewish civilization; Yiddish belongs primarily to one time and place.
—BZ · December 1st, 2009 at 12:54 am
BZ -
I would imagine that most universities teach Israeli Hebrew, a modern creation designed by lexographers and linguists; many with political aims in mind. In today’s world, this language is important and worthy of study in that it connects the student with the people, life , and culture that finds itself in the State of Israel. Yiddish on the other hand, along with the Hebrew of the Hebrews, the Ladino of the Sephards, and the Judeo-Arabic of the Teymeni and others ukdoyme ukdoyme, are examples of languages that arose naturally from “foreign” origins later to be employed by Jews and made Jewish through hundreds (if not thousands) of years of Jewish experience and cultural activity. Without disparaging Israeli Hebrew, I do find that it is too just as time and space oriented as you claim Yiddish to be. Insofar as these departments are placing Israeli Hebrew at a higher level of importance than any other “time and space” limited Jewish language, I still hold my position that all such languages should be afforded equal status in fulfilling the major requirement for the university (even if that means, in the post budget cut world, seeking the course and credit either from another university or summer program like that offered in vilna). Should biblical hebrew (the hebrew of the hebrews) be the subject in question my position would in fact be weakened, my only strength being the fact that such a language, which is so deeply connected to the Jewish faith, fails today in binding a world Jewish civilization which contains a large, if not majority, secular population with little connect to the Hebrew of the Hebrews that has in fact bound Jews of all corners of the world for thousands of years.
—Yisroel · December 1st, 2009 at 2:04 am
I am a graduate of UMD Jewish studies department and at least as far as the course work for the major is concerned Hebrew is far more important. There are requirements to take courses dealing with texts in Hebrew such as Bible courses and Medieval philosophy. There are no such requirements concerning Yiddish.
Currently I am studying to be a Jewish educator at the Hartman Institute and similarly the vision of a master Jewish educator relies heavily on knowledge of Hebrew and not Yiddish.
On the other hand I used to work at a Jewish Day school in LA where there was a very vibrant Yiddish language program and an attempt to reclaim Yiddish as an important content piece in the creation of Jewish identity amongst the students.
Yisroel, I reject your assumption that “in today’s world, this language is important and worthy of study in that it connects the student with the people, life , and culture that finds itself in the State of Israel.” Hebrew connects Jews to all other Jews across the historical timeline not only to the happenings of the modern State of Israel.
Yiddish is indeed an important Jewish language and deserves serious study so that we may be exposed to the richness of that culture and time period. But when push comes to shove Jewish History has shown that it prefers Hebrew as the language of Jewish national, cultural, and spiritual expression par exellance.
—uzi · December 1st, 2009 at 5:02 am
wow. BZ i would never imagine you saying such a thing, as you are so often so open-minded, fighting against presuppositions.
yisroel is quite right. though i myself am a doctoral student in jewish mysticism, and know hebrew (whatever that is) is essential to my task, i can acknowledge the biases in the jewish academia. the jewish studies world has pretensions of objectivity (as if such a thing could exist), but in truth it has always been a hybrid between scholarship and jewish communal advocacy. israel/zionist politics on university campuses are always centered in jewish studies departments (cf. my alma mater columbia as a perfect example).
yisroel is quite right about the artificial and specific nature of the modern, israeli hebrew language. indeed, (and i am sorry and a bit embarrassed i cannot produce the reference) a contemporary israeli linguist wants to rename the language of israel “israeli” and not hebrew.
personally, i disagree with such a move, as i recognize that learning even modern israeli hebrew will provide one with tools to begin making one’s way into texts composed in different historical iterations and dialects of hebrew. however, that brings me to my next point. though i myself am a professional student of jewish texts, and i do see my place in the university more like an extension of my Torah learning, i do recognize that jewish studies has been, over the years, biased by its relationships to “traditional” jewish learning, which privileges authoritative jewish text over non-hierarchical historical understandings. simply put (though i personally recommend a knowledge of jewish literature for all students of judaisms) hebrew (whatever that is) is not essential to all realms of jewish study.
to recap: 1) jewish studies has privileged the study of rabbinic texts, which has privileged forms of hebrew over other languages. 2) the modern israeli version of hebrew is a specific form of the language-body, and it is not a universal tongue lying behind all hebrews in all jewish literature. israeli hebrew’s dominance in the university is more of a political move than many jews give it credit for, given its programmatic history and the resultant exclusion of other forms of hebrew. personally, i am quite saddened by the flattening of the jewish linguistic plane caused by israeli hebrew’s hegemonic influence.
—invisible_hand · December 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
ah, sorry, post-script!
lastly, i object to the title and the framing of the article, which is universal to mainstream press articles about yiddish. this is similar to how every article about contemporary graphic literature is always entitled, “bang! pow! comics are not just for kids anymore!”
yiddish is not a dead language. though my relation to is is both professional (as i study hasidism) and personal (relationship to ancestral heritage, aesthetic enjoyment, feeling of continuity to tradition of yiddish socialism, neo-Hasidic spirituality), i recognize that the project of yiddish secular culture is not faring as well as it once did.
however, jewschool should not make the mistake the mainstream jewish community has for the past… however many years. the utra-orthodox, yiddish-speaking community is not an outlier. it is a real part of the jewish world, and unless we give them full consideration, we have a poorer understanding of our own communities, which means we can respond to it less well. even as a passionate jewish radical, we ignore these communities at our own peril, as it hampers our ability to respond to contemporary currents. habad and aish hatorah were allowed to slip in under the radar, in a sense, and now they dominate jewish outreach (as problematic as it is, it’s a debate for another thread).
demographics, demographics, demographics. look at the numbers. the yiddish-speaking community is growing, and it is the section of the jewish world with the highest birth and growth rate. yiddish is not a dead language at all.
—invisible_hand · December 1st, 2009 at 9:56 am
I hear some people still speak Aramaic. Does that make it worth study for the average Jewish Studies undergrad at a large state university?
—David A.M. Wilensky · December 1st, 2009 at 10:48 am
David, how else would said average undergrad understand both Talmud and Mendele?
—Amit · December 1st, 2009 at 11:34 am
habad and aish hatorah were allowed to slip in under the radar, in a sense, and now they dominate jewish outreach (as problematic as it is, it’s a debate for another thread).
Neither speak yiddish.
—Amit · December 1st, 2009 at 11:35 am
Neither speak yiddish
But don’t both groups present (to their students) Yiddish as the “true” Jewish language?
—Jonathan1 · December 1st, 2009 at 11:48 am
[Chabad/Aish] Neither speak yiddish.
Nonsense. Chabad yeshivas provide a solid, working foundation in yiddish. A lot of foundational hassidic writing is in yiddish - Likkutei Torah, Torah Ohr, etc. Hassidic maimarim switch between Hebrew, Yiddish and source Aramaic interchangeably. Most Chabad rabbis I know, even the BT’s, can carry on a basic conversation in yiddish, and some make it a point of teaching it to their kids from birth. Others don’t.
But don’t both groups present (to their students) Yiddish as the “true” Jewish language?
There are people like this. In the time I spent at Tiferes, my chavrusa was adamant that Yiddish is superior to Hebrew and brought multiple proofs that I can’t recount now. He is from Brazil and speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, fluent Yiddish, taught himself conversational Arabic… being a mere trilingual mortal, I didn’t feel qualified to argue. Most people don’t waste their lives over such issues. As I mentioned before, much of Chabad’s foundational writing is in Yiddish, which requires knowledge of both language, mindset and aphorisms, so the necessity for deeply comprehending Yiddish will remain, at least within this community.
I noticed one thing that no one has mentioned so far - Yiddish itself has dialects. I’m from Bessarabia, and the Yiddish I learned as a kid is different from the Litvisher or Chabad Yiddish of Belorussia and the Baltic states.
—Avigdor · December 1st, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Avigdor made a good case for the living Yiddish as spoken in the Chassidic (and the Litvisch/Misnagdisch) community. There are places in Jerusalem and Bnai Brak where you can’t do business if you don’t speak Yiddish. But these communities (and their Pikesville equivalents) don’t send their kids to institutions like UofM, neither as students nor as teachers.
What’s being lost, and this is a pity, is the SECULAR branch Yiddish.
—Simcha Daniel Burstyn · December 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
It does seem a shame to be characterizing Yiddish as a language that is nowadays the exclusive realm of Hassids, and irrelevant to the rest of us. I see Yiddish as important for its legacy in Ashkenazi labour and socialist movements.
I think the Yiddish v. Hebrew debate has a lot to do with how we envision what it means to “study” Judaism; are we studying religion/Israel (Hebrew) or culture/history/politics/heritage (Yiddish, for those of us from Eastern European stock, languages like Ladino for others)? Obviously that is a dichotomous way of putting it that doesn’t reflect the rich reach of both languages, but I feel like that is where this debate is going. Clearly both Hebrew and Yiddish are important, but the almost singular focus on Hebrew to the exclusion of colloquial Jewish languages in the realm of Jewish education does imply that the study of Judaism is perhaps a bit one-track-minded in terms of the study of religion.
—Hannah · December 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I see Yiddish as important for its legacy in Ashkenazi labour and socialist movements.
And, you know, literature.
—em · December 1st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Agreed!
—Hannah · December 1st, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Petition someone (with lots of money) to endow a position at the university.
The U of Maryland isn’t obligated to hold Yiddish courses, and if they were popular we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
—ML · December 1st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Don’t worry, the poles teach yiddish now. A language only has value if it is being used. We can’t just impose yiddish education on others when we can’t be bothered to learn it. If you want yiddish to survive, learn it and use it. Anything else is vain nostalgia.
—Avigdor · December 1st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Avigdor–
You don’t think it makes more sense to learn (1) Hebrew or (2) Aramaic, before Yiddish?
—Jonathan1 · December 1st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I think, starting at zero, it makes much more sense today to learn Hebrew before Yiddish. I am not proposing Yiddish over Hebrew, though some do (like my chavrusa). I was merely saying that instead of trying to social engineer our way out of losing Yiddish by forcing elite university departments to teach it to 15 people a year, those who wish to preserve Yiddish should simply pick up a book, learn it and speak it. It is a very simple language that many of us have already been exposed to as children. A language lives so long as we will to speak it.
Now that I think about it, that would be a fun thing to do with my future wife - learn a language together (Yiddish) that most people around us could not understand.
—Avigdor · December 1st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Hannah writes:
I think the Yiddish v. Hebrew debate has a lot to do with how we envision what it means to “study” Judaism; are we studying religion/Israel (Hebrew) or culture/history/politics/heritage (Yiddish, for those of us from Eastern European stock, languages like Ladino for others)?
Not all Jews come from either Yiddish or Ladino/etc. heritage. Most of my ancestors in the last several centuries spoke the vernacular of the country where they lived — English in the United States, and German in Germany. And there is plenty of Jewish culture/history/politics/heritage/literature to study in those languages too.
I’m not denying that Yiddish is essential in studying Eastern European Jewry (just as English is essential in studying North American Jewry), but Hebrew can be used to read sources from 2nd-century Israel, 5th-century Babylonia, 11th-century Spain, 15th-century Germany, 18th-century Poland, and 21st-century America. There’s just no comparison.
—BZ · December 1st, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I think the debate is essentially about the place of literary vs. vernacular languages and the importance of each. I think - just in sheer terms of amount - that the literary languages should win the love of the humanities.
—Amit · December 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 am
I think apples and oranges are being compared here. BZ, you’re referring to classical Hebrew as if it’s the same as spoken Hebrew, a language that has only been used in vernacular by a decent percentage of Jews for less than a century. During the time of the Mishnah it’s pretty safe to assume that most Jews were speaking Greek and Aramaic and those that spoke what we call Hebrew wouldn’t have been calling it Hebrew, most likely. Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic are all examples of the spoken languages Jews crafted using the surrounding vernacular and Hebraic elements. But to pit one against each other is a false analogy since Hebrew for an overwhelming majority of the centuries you mentioned and all in between, Hebrew was a language of study and prayer. Yiddish was spoken as the most widely spoken Jewish language on the globe for almost 1000 years.(since Sefardim/Mizrahim have had a more varied language base between Arabic, Farsi, Aramaic, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish,etc and their Judaic creoles).
—Justin · December 2nd, 2009 at 4:57 am
Justin - the three main chronolects of Hebrew (Classical, Middle and Modern) are sufficiently similar that one intro course should cover them all. “Hebrew” (such as it is) is obviously not very useful as a political language (Israelis are almost all conversant in English), but is useful as a literary language.
THe various Jewish vernaculars are cute footnotes to History, even important footnotes, but let’s not get carried away.
—Amit · December 2nd, 2009 at 7:58 am
my point is that Hebrew, for a good chunk of Jewish history, has not been a spoken language. I’m not saying modern Hebrew is unrelated to previous periods, simply that it is unique because it is a spoken language. Modern Hebrew is similar to Yiddish, in that regard. It is today the language of both vernacular and literature. I was merely noting that Yiddish has a much longer history and much more widespread use than modern Hebrew. To compare classical and middle Hebrew, which were not spoken but only written and learned, to spoken languages is not an appropriate analogy, in my opinion. that’s all.
—Justin · December 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 am
I agree, but in an undergraduate setting, if you learn one Hebrew, you’ve essentially learned them all. So to compare Yiddish and Modern Hebrew while ignoring the history of Hebrew is not an appropriate analogy, in my opinion. That’s all.
—Amit · December 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 am
One thousand years of Jewish culture is a lot more than a “cute footnote.”
If hardly anybody is taking the classes, cutting them probably is the right decision. When universities have to make cuts, that’s generally how they do it. The question of whether the program did enough to promote or encourage students to take Yiddish was one for better economic times.
But I don’t understand why this discussion seems to have devolved into one of the inherent worth of Yiddish or that requires demeaning Yiddish. Which is more “worthwhile” depends on what you want to study and what you’re interested in. And it’s not like it’s unheard of for undergraduate programs to require students to learn more than one language. Classics programs often require students to learn Greek and Latin. Latin American Studies programs often require students to learn Spanish and Portuguese.
Like I said, it was a discussion for better times, but the complaint that the program privileged certain understandings of what aspects of Jewish culture are “worthy” of study to the detriment seems pretty valid to me.
—em · December 2nd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I don’t want to add to the pile-on as I really 100% agree with Em, but I really do want to emphasize that whatever side of this issue one is on, the word “cute” is really pretty offensive and obviously patronizing.
—Hannah · December 2nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Amit, I agree with the most recent commentators wholeheartedly. Jewish languages are most assuredly NOT a cute footnote in history.
your implied assumption is that Hebrew is a non-vernacular language, which is essential to the body politic of the Jewish people.
firstly, taking the globalizing forces that are succeeding in the flattening out of the Jewish world as a given is a sad thing in itself.
secondly, the point that YIDDISH IS NOT A DEAD LANGUAGE is an important one that people are missing. While modern, secular Yiddish culture is definitely weak today, Yiddish is still widely spoken by the Hasidic community, which is growing rapidly.
lastly, assuming the essential and pure continuity of Hebrew is a fallacy. Today’s modern, Israeli Hebrew has much resemblance to a “vernacular” language, given its huge influx of english and arabic loan words. hence the academic claim that it should really be called “israeli,” the vernacular language of the israeli populace.
on an interesting sociology of religion note, the vernacular was seen as the language for “women and men who are like women,” especially in Yiddish history, with women’s books like Tzena Renna being written in VayberTaytsch, Women-German/Yiddish. But today, many contemporary Hareidi and Hasidic books for women are being written in modern, Israeli Hebrew, which has taken on the role of “vernacular” in opposition to the still sacred, literary Loshn Koydesh (Holy Tongue, the Hebrew/Aramaic mix) of Rabbinic literature.
—invisible_hand · December 2nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Let’s not forget Birobidjan, or the ייִדישע אווטאָנאָמע געגנט, if you will. Beginning in the early ’30s, Yiddish was the official language there. Still today, while the official language is now Russian, Yiddish is taught in many schools. There is much more to say on this–I feel a post is probably in order…
—Raysh Weiss · December 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
the complaint that the program privileged certain understandings of what aspects of Jewish culture are “worthy” of study…seems pretty valid to me.
Now there’s a succinct description of the question. Thanks, em.
I imagine that my father (z”l), whose native language was Yiddish and who never gave a thought to modern Hebrew in his life, would be surprised to find that the primary spoken language of most of European Jewry for nearly a thousand years is a “cute footnote” to history.
—miri · December 2nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
in an undergraduate setting, if you learn one Hebrew, you’ve essentially learned them all.
As an academic in Judaism, this hasn’t been my experience at all. Learning biblical Hebrew in the academy is generally NOT helpful in learning modern Hebrew (even apart from the fact that learning to actually write and speak any language is different from reading it).
It’s possible that going from modern to biblical is easier (as Marc Zvi-Brettler’s book suggests); since I knew modern Hebrew first, I found biblical Hebrew much easier than some of my classmates - though the grammar is of course pretty different - but it was still certainly not a case of “learning them all.”
—miri · December 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
The end of Yiddish Studies at UMD is indeed a sad commentary on Jewish studies in the U.S., as well as the current depression. The sad and horrible truth is that the murder of the six million during the Holocaust destroyed the Yiddish speaking world and that assimilation in Europe, the U.S. and Israel ended Yiddish as a spoken language among the overwhelming majority of the reamining Ashkenazic population. Haredim will still speak Yiddish, but they will not study or write literature in it. Hebrew will maintain its dominance because it is spoken in modern form by six million or so and studied in ancient/medieval form as a language or religion. Yiddish lacks both of these. I don’t write this with glee, but with sadness.
—Steven · December 3rd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
steven -
i agree with you that hebrew’s current ascendency is due to the political nature of history, as it folded out. we are all good foucauldians, i am sure…
however, i would like to voice a note of caution in re: to your description of yiddish’s history and current status.
first of all, though it is surely not a dominant cultural force, there is still a significant number of jews (and gentiles) who support and produce yiddish culture.
secondly, the erasure of yiddish in israel was not due to assimilation (alone). israel put the sincere kibosh on yiddish in the early 20th century, seeing its embrace and promotion of hebrew as essential to zionist culture succeeding. yiddish (and more “ashkenazic” sounding hebrew) were deemed too effeminate for the burgeoning political project in palestine. the mode of pronouncing hebrew is often called “sephardic,” which ignores its political motivation to make hebrew sound more masculine and aggressive, the main purpose of placing the accent on the final syllable.
lastly, the hasidic community is growing, growing, growing. of course english has made its way into the community, which is reflected in the contemporary williamsburg dialect. for example, the different forms of the definite article (”the” in english) based on gender and case have all pretty much turned into “di,” which sounds and functions much like the english “the.”
books and cds in yiddish are still being produced.
—invisible_hand · December 3rd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
the mode of pronouncing hebrew is often called “sephardic,” which ignores its political motivation to make hebrew sound more masculine and aggressive, the main purpose of placing the accent on the final syllable.
It was also the mode of pronouncing Hebrew prevalent among the Sepharadim.
(Ashkenazim had changed their accenting in liturgical Hebrew in the 18th century, before Zionism. Don’t strech it.)
—Amit · December 3rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm
OK - to respond:
(1) Compared to the great canon of Jewish literature, Yiddish is a footnote. Sorry. Yell all you want: Homer is Homer, and Appolonius Rhodius is not Homer. This does not mean he is not important, just that he is not Homer.
(2) As an academic in Jewish studies - if you know one, you know them all. Not well. Not enough to write in them or about them; but enough to read them
(3) The fact that some (!) hassidim speak Yiddish still shouldn’t help it make the cut. When they start writing important things in Yiddish (like Avigdor pointed out with Chabad - but there will be no more writing in Chabad, ad bias goel tzedek, tommorow according to them) things will change.
(4) It’s nice that we like to say that there were cultural undercurrents and subversive subcultures and blah blah. You don’t understand any of those cool cool things without a sound grounding in the BASICS. in the case of Jewish studies: three years of Bible and three years of Talmud. At least. Otherwise you know nothing.
—Amit · December 3rd, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Amit, you do understand that a Jewish Studies program at an American public university is not the same as Jewish learning in the religious sense, right? Certainly, there’s some overlap, but Jewish Studies (like African American Studies, like Latin American Studies) is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding a culture and a civilization using history, philosophy, religion, literature, anthropology, sociology, etc. I poked around the Web site looking for a nice “graduates of this program are expected to ….” and didn’t find one, so let me provide a sampling of course titles instead.
“American Jewish Experience”
“Fantasy and Supernatural in Jewish Literature”
“The Jew and the City Through the Centuries”
“The Hebrew Bible: Narrative”
“The Hebrew Bible: Poetry and Rhetoric”
“Critical Approaches to Israeli Culture”
“Jews and Judaism in Antiquity”
“Modern Jewish History”
These students aren’t doing three years of Bible and three years of Talmud. That’s not what the program is for and that’s not what they enroll for.
Frankly, given that you see Judaism as only a religion and nothing else, I’m not sure you’d have much use for Jewish Studies.
—em · December 3rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
amit-
every hasidic book are yiddish drushim translated into hebrew. and many of those books were distributed in yiddish. and em’s points stand strong. talmud is not involved in most Jewish Studies, nor is traditional biblical commentary. you’re not making much sense any more.
—Justin · December 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Em, if you can’t see bible or talmud in those course titles, you must have no use for jewish studies.
—Amit · December 4th, 2009 at 5:18 am
em writes:
I poked around the Web site looking for a nice “graduates of this program are expected to ….” and didn’t find one, so let me provide a sampling of course titles instead.
I think this is something like what you’re looking for:
“The Jewish Studies major provides undergraduates with a framework for organized and interdisciplinary study of the history, philosophy, and literature of the Jews from antiquity to the present. Jewish Studies draws on a vast literature in a number of languages, especially Hebrew and Aramaic, and includes the Bible, the Talmud, and medieval and modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish language and literature comprise an important sub-field.”
So everyone’s right.
—BZ · December 4th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Em, if you can’t see bible or talmud in those course titles, you must have no use for jewish studies.
And if I’d said nobody should study Bible and Talmud because they’re worthless and have nothing to do with Judaism, this would be an appropriate response. Except I didn’t say anything remotely like that.
—em · December 4th, 2009 at 12:24 pm