Posted on 12/21/2011 11:27:50 AM PST by nickcarraway
A group of American college students stands in a semicircle, clapping and hopping on one foot as they sing in Yiddish: "Az der rebe tantst, tantsn ale khsidim!"
In English, the lyrics mean: "When the rebbe dances, so do all the Hasidim."
This isn't music appreciation or even a class at a synagogue. It's the first semester of Yiddish at Emory University in Atlanta — one of just a handful of college programs across the country studying the Germanic-based language of Eastern European Jews.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This is meshuggah!
If you can’t say something nice about someone, say it in Yiddish.
Oy! ping
Loyzem gayne.
About 30 years ago, I was the Activities Director at a Kosher Nursing Facility. Many of the residents were Holocaust Survivors living out their remaining days there. I was responsible for providing them with entertainment, Recreational Therapy, and religious life. Very few of them knew Hebrew except for prayers, but they ALL knew Yiddish.
So I learned it. Now, thirty years later, I am an Irish-Indian-Christian Lady who sings and speaks Yiddish! Most of my Jewish Customers who are in their thirties don’t speak or understand it. I think it is nice that it is coming back, as it is a very fun and delightful language, from which we get a LOT of American Expressions.
This thread is making me all verklempt~!
about as useful as esperanto
True enough, but it's English.
Even though I certainly didn’t grow up with this practice, under my wife’s influence, I try to avoid using Hebrew for profanity. It is a holy language. THE holy language.
But your sentiment is well taken. Obama IS a f——g dick.
I could just plotz!
I think ballots and driver’s license exams should be available in Yiddish. Work on that, will ya? Putzes!
Either way Point taken, it is the Holy Language.
Did any of those nursing home residents ever go vekachtah on you?
Back in 1974, I volunteered for a liaison program with the Israeli Air Force. The requirement was that I take a 44-week Hebrew course. Four weeks short of finishing, the funding for the project went away. We finished the class but never got to use it. The American Christian instructor said that Yiddish was the language of the ghetto and REAL Jews spoke Hebrew. His wife was orthodox Jewish and the instructor took part in the Jewish rituals. There a few holocaust survivors at the hospital where I volunteer and I try to hit them with some of the Hebrew that I do remember, and they’re always amazed that a “goy” can speak it.
“Hast du gesehen in deine leben?”
Halt din zoken!
Yes, real Jews speak Hebrew and even Ashkenazi Jews know that Hebrew is more accurately spoken with a Sephardic dialect (what you learned) than an Ashkenazi one.
Before the Migdal Bavel (that’s the Tower of Babel for all of you in Rio Linda) where mankind went from one language to seventy, the single language was Hebrew. Mankind is on track to speak a single language again and from what I can see it will be Hebrew again or some proto-Semitic language that sounds similar.
Teach your children and grand children today how to speak it and they’ll be ahead of the curve.
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