Undzere mame-loshn: Feminist Yiddishisms

Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had with Jewish women were about the Yiddish word for “Jewish woman.” This past summer, my Yiddish literature teacher at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research told me I’d find yidene, a typical feminization of yid, in older texts. She warned against using it as a self-descriptor, as it carried negative connotations of submission and domesticity. She told me I should call myself a yidishe tochter, literally “Jewish daughter,” instead. But when I brought this up to a professor at Smith College, a younger Yiddish speaker, teaching my class on American Jewish literature,  she told me that yidene only carried those negative connotations because of its most common English translation: “Jewess.” She said there was nothing wrong with using it to describe myself or other women, and I was relieved—who wants to call herself a daughter before she calls herself a woman?

However, I’ve slowly learned that those connotations of feminine submission and domesticity are attached not just to certain words, but to the Yiddish language itself.

Yiddish has been seen as a “feminine” language for centuries. In shtetls and other Jewish areas in Central and Eastern Europe, Yiddish was the spoken language, while Ancient Hebrew was studied by men in synagogues and religious schools. As a result of this divide—though Jews, regardless of gender, spoke Yiddish—Yiddish became associated with women and the domestic sphere. Meanwhile, in Christian European culture, stereotypes of Jewish men as effeminate and emasculated proliferated, and Yiddish by association was again seen as feminine.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a movement advocating for the revival of Hebrew as a spoken vernacular among Jews emerged hand in hand with Zionism. Hebrew revivalists used the negative stereotypes surrounding Yiddish to their advantage, portraying Hebrew alongside Zionism as an empowered, masculine alternative to submissive, feminine Yiddish-speaking diasporic Jewry. “Because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty,” wrote Ze’ev Jabonitsky, an important figure in early Zionism. The archetype of the “Yid,” heavily influenced by European stereotypes but now utilized within Jewish culture, was tied up in Yiddish and its feminine associations.

Now, Hebrew, not Yiddish, is the Jewish language of choice for almost every Jewish community around the world. The Holocaust wiped out the majority of native Yiddish speakers, and amid growing pressure to assimilate, most others stopped speaking it. As the State of Israel was established around the same time, Hebrew gained popularity. Today, Hebrew has nine million speakers, and Yiddish around 600,000, most of whom are Hasidic Jews.

I count myself one of those 600,000. Two years ago, I fell in love with Yiddish theater. The years since have been full of concerts, plays, classes, conversations, conferences, sing-a-longs, in Yiddish. Sometimes (often) bad Yiddish, but Yiddish nonetheless. I’ve found a home for myself in Yiddishism.

Yiddishism is, very simply put, a belief that Yiddish should be spoken and taught. It formed as a response to advocates for Hebrew revival in the late nineteenth century, but grew into its current state after the huge decline in Yiddish speakers in the 1940s and 50s. Today, it’s a small, welcoming community of language scholars, native speakers, artists, musicians, and anyone looking for an alternative Jewish culture. 

It’s also a movement that has always had Jewish feminism at its heart. Yiddishism is marked by its foremothers and the women who keep it alive today. Walking the halls of Yiddish New York, you’ll hear names like Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and Adrienne Cooper spoken with the utmost reverence. You’ll see Jewish women of all ages come together in song and dance, read Yiddish radio plays about abortion, or translate sex education columns in Yiddish newspapers. Through Yiddishism, my identity as a woman and a lesbian has been affirmed and expanded in ways I never thought possible. I understand myself better when I read Etlekhe verter oyf di mame-loshn, Irena Klepfisz’s Yiddish-English poem on lesbian and female identity. And even though my Yiddish journey started in historically women’s colleges where feminist thought and gender-expansive tradition is second nature, I’ve found no difference in the wider, co-ed Yiddish spaces.

Much of what makes Yiddishism special is its very conspicuous position as an alternative Jewish community. Mainstream American Jewish culture has never felt heymish (“homey”) to me. It has a long and beautiful tradition of feminism, but that has always existed in tension with a long and ugly tradition of marginalization, misogyny, and natalism that persists in Jewish spaces today, as many other Jewish women and I have experienced. Yiddishism, to me, feels like a breath of fresh air. I can be a queer, leftist, feminist Yiddishist without feeling like a walking contradiction, without worrying about raising tensions just by existing. Instead, I am embraced by a long tradition of feminist Yiddishism, and it feels like coming home.

In a world that has dismissed Yiddish for its feminine connotations, choosing the long and sometimes lonely path of learning and embracing it is a feminist act. Yiddishism means loving the language not despite its domestic, feminine associations, but because of them. It means rejecting the notion that Jews must be hypermasculine to be worthy. Regardless of their native languages, religions, or backgrounds, many call Yiddish di mame-loshn: the mother tongue. It’s a reminder that the language exists and survives thanks to a long tradition of mothers and daughters. Maybe I’d rather not identify myself as a yidishe tochter, but I will always be a tochter fun di mame-loshn: a daughter of Yiddish.