This thumbnail sketch of academic "uses" of Yiddish scarcely does justice to the civilization that flourished for seven centuries in Europe, nor to the curiosity it still awakens. When the late Isaac Bashevis Singer was asked how it felt to write in a "dying language," he joked that legions of graduate students would some day be writing dissertations on his books. This year two visiting professors from China were at Harvard doing just that, but once they began studying the literature more broadly, they moved on to other Yiddish writers as well. These visitors complained that I and my department were not doing enough to promote Yiddish---and Jewish Studies--in China. I should have sent them to the administration of the University of Maryland to make the case for its retention there!
The unanticipated appeal of Shulamis over the social dramas that until recently attracted the lion's share of attention reminds us that education and culture do not always follow the most plausible path. The famous Yiddish "Tale of the Seven Beggars" by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav makes a related point. Nahman inverts all our expectations to show that the blind man is the most insightful, the deaf man most alert, the eldest, most youthful, the handicapped, most complete, and so forth. He invites us to recognize through the power of a story--in its telling as much as in its moral--the reality of the spiritual life over the material one in which we place our trust. I am tempted to apply the point to Yiddish. Often mistaken for a "minor" language, it contains the experience of a people that burned and burned and was not consumed. Its value may have grown as its speakers declined.
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