1937 Jewish SIGNED YIDDISH PHOTOBOOK Theatre RUSSIAN HABIMAH Raikin BEN ARI Hess

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1937 Jewish SIGNED YIDDISH PHOTOBOOK Theatre RUSSIAN HABIMAH Raikin BEN ARI Hess:
$175.00

DESCRIPTION :Here for sale is an extremelyRARE YIDDISH JEWISH ART BOOK of remarkableIMPORTANCE and BEAUTY which is dedicated to thelegendary Judaica YIDDISH JEWISH Theatre group \"HABIMA\" . The book is HAND SIGNED and INSCRIBED in YIDDISH by the legendary ACTOR and TEACHER of Russian origin RAIKIN BEN ARI , One of the founders of the Jewish - Yiddish RUSIAN THEATRE of HABIMA who also wrote it and published it in CHICAGO USA 1937. ThePHOTOGRAPHED book was published in 1937 ( Dated ) in Chicago USA ( FIRSTedition ) under the name \" The MOSCOW THEATRE HABIMA\" . The richly YIDDISH PHOTOGRAPHED book is indeed a TREASURE of information regarding the RUSSIAN ACTORS and ACTRESSES of HABIMA in the first years of its existance. ( HANA ROVINA among many others ) . The PHOTOS are not credited but part of them was definitely created by NINI and CARRY HESS , Themselves being a couple of LEGENDARY portraits PHOTOGRAPHERS . Many photographs by Nini and Carry Hess printed in sepia tones on separate chromo leaves, Bound with the book as issued. The photos are largely portraits of actors in the costumes of the characters they portray in the Moscow Habima productions of \"Der Golem\", \"Der Dybuk\", \"Ewige Jude\", \"Jaacobs Traumand\" and\"Kopfe\". Captures in YIDDISH and ENGLISH. Prefaces , Commentaries and blessings by ALBERT EINSTEIN , MAXIM GORKY, FEUDOR SHALIAPIN ( Fyodor Shalyapin ) and CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI. Scarce . YIDDISH . Original illustrated HC with cloth spine . Gilt headings and illustrationsSize around 7 x 10\" . 354 pp. uncut leaves. 66 PHOTOS printed on one face only on chromo leaves . Excellent pristine condition. clean. Tightly bound. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) .Will be sent inside a protective rigid envelope .
AUTHENTICITY : Thisis anORIGINALvintage1937 ( Dated )PHOTOGRAPHY YIDDISH book, NOT a recent editionor a reprint , It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmailis $19 .Will be sent inside a protective envelope . Will be sent within3-5 days after payment . Kindly note that duration of Int\'l registered airmail is around 14 days.
Nini Hess and HABIMAH THEATRE 1884 – 1957 by AnjaHellhammerIn the years between 1914 and 1933 numerous significantpersonalities in art, culture, politics, society and sport met in thephotographic portraiture studio of Nini and Carry Hess. With their technicaland aesthetic brilliance, the sisters were among the leading photographers inGermany of the time. In the 1920s their photographs essentially stamped theimage of Woman. Their long collaboration with the Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt(Frankfurt city theaters) resulted in the portraits of numerous actors, both inthe roles they played and in their own person. These included Albert Bassermann(1867–1952), Elisabeth Bergner, CarlEbert (1887–1980), Heinrich George (1893–1946), Paul Graetz (1890–1938), GerdaMüller (1895–1951), Leontine Sagan (1889–1974); the composers Paul Hindemith(1885–1963) and Leos Janacek (1854–1928), and the authors Thomas Mann(1875–1955), Fritz von Unruh (1885–1970) and Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977).The blossoming of their studio coincided with the major development phase ofboth photography and theater; the genesis of their pictorial “language” wasinfluenced not only by epoch-making theatrical innovations in the form ofExpressionism and Constructivism, but also by complex movements in photography,such as art photography, straight photography and Neue Sachlichkeit. Nini andCarry Hess perceived modern art as a productive challenge, but not as anauthority to which they had to submit. Professional photographers combiningcraftsmanship, artistic craft and fine art, the focus of their portraits wasalways on the characterization which expressed itself in the face of theindividual subjects of their works. Stefanie Hess was born in Frankfurtam Main on August 21, 1884, the daughter of Samuel Hess (1848–1924), abusinessman, and Lina Hess (née Salomon, 1859–1942). Her sister Cornelia wasborn five years later, on November 11, 1889. Nicknamed Nini and Carry, thesisters grew up in a well-to-do liberal Jewish house, which ensured a soundeducation for both daughters. Nothing is known about their professionaltraining. In 1912 Carry Hess was awarded a prize for professional photographyin the category of Art Photography at the General German Photography Exhibitionin Heidelberg. Assisted by their family’s social status, Nini and Carry Hessfounded their joint portrait photography studio in the Sigmund Strauss House at2–4 Börsenstrasse (formerly the Theaterplatz, now Rathenauplatz), which existeduntil 1938. The family’s encouragement not only furthered business in theirworkplace located in such a superior neighborhood, but was also of the greatestimportance in developing a distinguished clientele. The portraits that appearedfrom 1914 on in the renowned photographic professional journal Das Atelierdes Photographen (The Photographers’ Studio) displayed the contribution ofthe sisters’ characteristic ability, their superb technical skill and theirfastidious artistry. Despite their candid use of dramatic lighting effects anda certain tendency to fashionable mannerism, their early portraits are amongthe precursors of the modern conception of portraiture. From 1920 to 1932 Niniand Carry Hess belonged to the Society of German Photographers (GDL), foundedin 1919 by the famous portraitist, Hugo Erfuth. A major factor in theenduring establishment of the studio was the intensive collaboration, from 1918until 1933, with the Frankfurt stage, which at the time was, together withBerlin, one of the most progressive theater centers in Germany. Inspired by aprofound interest in the theater and enjoying the privilege of numerouspersonal contacts, Nini and Carry Hess worked continuously at theirphotographic idiom to make it part of a photographic version of a majoravant-garde tendency. Their expressive chiaroscuro photographs of scenes fromplays and role-portraits belong to this creative period of FrankfurtExpressionism. The same period also saw the creation of dance studies—composedof light, line and movement—of the major exponents of Expressionist dance (GretPalucca [1902–1993] and Mary Wigman [1886–1973]); the Constructivist-inspiredrole portraits of the Moscow Chamber Theater (1925) and the Habimah Ensemble(1927); and their close-grained, New Expressionist stage reportage of importantproductions and significant open-air theater performances (Heidelberg CastleTheater Festival, Frankfurt-Römerberg Theater Festival). Many of theirportraits, dance studies, stage photos and reportages were published incontemporary newspapers (Frankfurter Illustrierte Zeitung, SüdwestdeutscheRundfunkzeitung, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung), illustrated magazines (UHU—UllsteinsIllustrierte Monatshefte, Die Dame, Atlantis, ScherlsMagazin), periodicals (Das Theater, Der Tanz) andphotographic publications (Das deutsche Lichtbild, Das Atelier desPhotographen), as well as in illustrated books dealing with the “New Woman”of the 1920s and with the history of dance and theater. Like many of theartists working in the field of Frankfurt theater, Nini and Carry Hess werecompelled to terminate their collaboration with the theaters in 1933. Carry’sattempt to develop a new professional life in Paris proved a failure. In thewinter of 1938–1939, after the SA (the Nazi Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers)destroyed the studio, including all its technical equipment and the archives ofnegatives on November 10, 1938, she fled to the South of France, where shesurvived the war in hiding. In 1942 Nini Hess was deported and murdered inAuschwitz. After World War II Carry Hess returned to Paris, but was unable toresume work because she was blind in one eye. In 1957 she received reparationsand a pension from the authorities in Wiesbaden (Germany). She died in Chur onAugust 17, 1957, while on vacation in Switzerland. Only a few of the originalphotographs taken by Nini and Carry Hess survived the Nazi period in privatecollections, museums and archives.Habima was founded in 1918 by Nahum Zemach. Later it operated under theauspices of the Moscow Art TheatreStanislavski who arranged for themainly Polish actors to be trained by Yevgeny Vakhtangov.The People\'s Commissar of NationalitiesAffairs, Joseph Stalin, also authorized thetheatre\'s creation. In 1926, the theatre left the SovietUnion and toured several years before coming toTel Aviv in 1928.At that time Habima invited director AlekseiDikiy from the Moscow Art Theatre. Dikiy directedtwo successful plays for Habima: one was Der Oytser (The Treasure), a play in Yiddishby Sholom Aleichem, that premiered onDecember 29, 1928, the second was The Crown, a play by David Calderon, thatpremiered on May 23, 1929 in Tel Aviv. With the success of Dikiy\'s directorshipin the season of 1928/29, Habima gained reputation as a national Jewish theatrewith a permanent repertoire and stage in Tel Aviv. The image of actress Hana Rovinastarring as Leah\'le in the historical Habima production of S. Ansky\'sThe Dybbuk (performed by Habimain the Hebrew-language translation by Hayyim Nahman Bialikis a cultural icon that to many represents Jewish and Israeli theatre. Habimahas been officially considered the national theatre of Israel since at least1958, the year in which it received the Israel Prizefor theatre,such year being also the first year in which the Prize was awarded to an organization.Habima employs 80 actors and another 120 work at the complex. Yiddish ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally \"Jewish\") is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken in many parts of the world. It developed as a fusion of different German dialects with adstrats of Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic vocabulary and some traces of vocabulary from the Romance languages. Yiddish orthography uses the Hebrew alphabet. The language originated in the Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the 10th century in the Rhineland and then spread to Central and Eastern Europe and eventually to other continents. In the earliest surviving references to it, the language is called לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashknez = \"language of Ashkenaz\") and טײַטש (taytsh, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for the language otherwise spoken in the region of origin, now called Middle High German). In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally \"mother tongue\"), distinguishing it from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh, \"holy tongue\"). The term \"Yiddish\" did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature of the language until the 18th century. For a significant portion of its history, Yiddish was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews and once spanned a broad dialect continuum from Western Yiddish to three major groups within Eastern Yiddish: Litvish, Poylish and Ukrainish. Eastern and Western Yiddish are most markedly distinguished by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin in the former. Western Yiddish has few remaining speakers but the Eastern dialects remain in wide use. Yiddish is written and spoken in many Orthodox Jewish communities around the world, although there are also a number of Orthodox Jews who do not know Yiddish. It is a home language in most Hasidic communities, where it is the first language learned in childhood, used in schools and in many social settings. Yiddish is also the academic language of the study of the Talmud according to the tradition of the Lithuanian yeshivas. Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense to designate attributes of Ashkenazic Jewish culture (for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music). Yiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, yidish/idish, literally \"Jewish\") is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the pre-existing language of the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vocabulary. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script. The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashknez = \"language of Ashkenaz\") or טײַטש (taytsh), a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally \"mother tongue\"), distinguishing it from Hebrew and Aramaic, which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh, \"holy tongue\"). The term \"Yiddish\" did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was more commonly called \"Jewish\", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but \"Yiddish\" is again the more common designation. Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes SouthEastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), MidEastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian), and NorthEastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a large number of Orthodox Jewish communities worldwide and is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among most Hasids. Yiddish is also the academic language of the study of the Talmud according to the tradition of the Lithuanian yeshivas. The term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture (for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music).[3]Genealogical originsA prevailing view of long standing was that Yiddish was derived almost entirely from the Middle High German spoken in the region in which the Ashkenazi community settled. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language.Subsequent linguistic investigation has questioned this notion, and provides two alternative lines of approach to the origins of Yiddish.[4] Both agree that Yiddish resulted from the fusion of the language spoken by the Jewish community prior to its arrival in Germanic territory with the indigenous language of that territory. There is, however, divergence of thought about the locus of the linguistic interaction, the elements of the indigenous language that carried over into the nascent Yiddish, and the identity of the language that was thereby transformed.The first scholarly statement of this approach was provided by Max Weinreich in the 1920s, and remains widely accepted.[5] Weinreich developed a model in which Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian, who were literate in Hebrew or Aramaic, migrated to the Rhine Valley, where they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German. Both he and Solomon Birnbaum developed this further in the mid-1950s.[6] Further studies in the same school debated the location in which the interaction took place, taking the basic alternatives to be the Rhineland and Bavaria. This work allows that there may have been parallel developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged instead out of contact between speakers of High German and natively Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East.[7]In 1991, Paul Wexler proposed that Yiddish was not a Germanic language, but rather Judeo-Sorbian (a Western Slavic language) whose vocabulary had been largely replaced by High German in the 9th to 12th centuries, when large numbers of German-speakers settled in Sorbian and Polabian lands. A second shift occurred in perhaps the 15th to 17th centuries, when Yiddish speakers migrated eastward, intermingling with Jews – possibly including descendents of the Khazars – speaking the Polesian dialect of Belarusian/Ukrainian (an Eastern Slavic language), who then relexified their language to Yiddish.[8] In this theory, genealogically Yiddish is not a Germanic language, but a Slavic language, retaining a largely Slavic phonology and syntax combined with Germanic vocabulary and morphology, though even these Germanic components often follow Slavic semantics. (Wexler also posits two later relexifications of Yiddish itself, in the late-19th century, one resulting in Modern Hebrew and the other in Esperanto, both of which would thus also be Slavic languages.) Regardless of the relative merit of the Germanic and Slavic schools on the origin of Yiddish, both recognize the massive extent of its Germanic vocabulary.HistoryIn the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture formed in Central Europe. This came to be called Ashkenazi, from Ashkenaz (Genesis 10:3), the medieval Hebrew name for northern Europe and Germany.[9] Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews, which ranged into southern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations.Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. The first language of Ashkenazi Jews may, as noted above, have been Aramaic, the vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia. The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymus). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. Much work needs to be done, though, to fully analyze the contributions of those languages to Yiddish.It is generally accepted that early Yiddish was likely to have contained elements from other languages of the Near East and Europe, absorbed through migrations. Since some settlers may have come via France and Italy, it is also likely that the Romance-based Jewish languages of those regions were represented. Traces remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary: for example, בענטשן (bentshn, to bless), from the Latin benedicere; לייענען (leyenen, to read), from the Latin legere; and the personal names Anshl, cognate to Angel or Angelo; Bunim (probably from \"bon homme\"). Western Yiddish includes additional words of Latin derivation (but still very few): for example, orn (to pray), cf. Latin and Italian \"orare\".The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the many dialects from which standard German would emerge a few centuries later. In time, Jewish communities would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region. Although not reflected in the spoken language, a main point of difference was the use of the Hebrew alphabet for the recording of the Germanic vernacular, which may have been adopted either because of the community\'s familiarity with the alphabet or to prevent the non-Jewish population from understanding the correspondence. In addition, there was probably widespread illiteracy in the non-Hebrew script, with the level of illiteracy in the non-Jewish communities being even higher. Another point of difference was the use of Hebrew and Aramaic words. These words and terms were used because of their familiarity, but more so because in most cases there were no equivalent terms in the vernacular which could express the Jewish concepts or describe the objects of cultural significance.Written evidenceIt is not known when the Yiddish writing system first developed but the oldest surviving literary document using it is a blessing in the Worms mahzor,[10] a Hebrew prayer book from 1272 (with a scalable image online at the indicated reference; described extensively in Frakes, 2004 and Baumgarten/Frakes, 2005):This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in a purely Hebrew text.[11] Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר, makhazor (prayer book for the High Holy Days) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ, beis hakneses (synagogue) – had been included. The pointing appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation.Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in the late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf.[12] During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community\'s adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant, which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the geniza of a Cairo synagogue in 1896, and also contains a collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah.PrintingThe advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which has survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita\'s Bovo-Bukh, composed around 1507–08 and printed in at least forty editions, beginning in 1541. Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written Pariz un Viene (Paris and Vienna). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, Vidvilt (often referred to as \"Widuwilt\" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof, an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Gravenberg. Another significant writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557.Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew, but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh, and religious writing specifically for women, such as the Tseno Ureno and the Tkhines. One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print.The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read mame-loshn but not loshn-koydesh, and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish was ווײַבערטײַטש (vaybertaytsh = \"women\'s taytsh,\" shown in the heading and fourth column in the adjacent illustration), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket — the construction is uncertain).[13]An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script, from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Ladino, is printed in Hebrew script.)SecularizationThe Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch[14] (i. e. \"Moses German\")[15]—began to decline in the 18th century, as the Enlightenment and the Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language of \"intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups\". (Liptzin1972 ).In Eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see Yiddish Renaissance). Notable Yiddish writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער (tevye der milkhiker = Tevye the Dairyman) inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof; and Isaac Leib Peretz.20th centuryIn the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish film were booming, and it for a time achieved status as one of the official languages of the Ukrainian People\'s Republic, the Belarusian and the short-lived Galician SSR, and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to the 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO. Yiddish emerged as the national language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected Zionism and sought Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe.[citation needed] It also contended with Modern Hebrew as a literary language among Zionists. In Vilna, there was intense debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish.[16]Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, \"As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that the most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and \'unnecessary\' Slavisms.\"[17] The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom.[citation needed] This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries.Numbers of speakersOn the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers.[7] The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Around five million of those killed—85 percent of the Jews who died in the Holocaust—were speakers of Yiddish.[18] Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the strictly monolingual stance of the Zionist movement, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Orthodox (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands[19] and Sweden. Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly. Ethnologue estimated that as of ca. 1990 there were 1.5 million speakers of Eastern Yiddish,[20] of which over a third lived in Ukraine. In contrast, the Modern Language Association reports fewer than 200,000 in the United States.[21] Western Yiddish is reported by Ethnologue to have had an \"ethnic population\" of slightly below 50,000 in 2000.[22] Other estimates are also given, for example, of a worldwide Yiddish-speaking population of about two million in 1996 in a report by the Council of Europe.[23] Further demographic information about the recent status of what is treated as an Eastern-Western dialect continuum is provided in the YIVO Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry). Status as a language There has been frequent debate about the extent of the linguistic independence of Yiddish from the languages that it absorbed. There has been periodic assertion that Yiddish is a dialect of German, or even just broken German, more of a linguistic mishmash than a true language\".[24][not in citation given] Even when recognized as an autonomous language, it has sometimes been referred to as Judeo-German, along the lines of other Jewish languages like Judeo-Persian or Judeo-French. A widely cited summary of attitudes in the 1930s was published by Max Weinreich, quoting a remark by an auditor of one of his lectures: אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט (a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot—\"A language is a dialect with an army and navy\", facsimile excerpt discussed in detail in a separate article). Israel and Zionism The national languages of Israel are Hebrew and Arabic. The debate in Zionist circles over the use of Yiddish in Israel and in the Diaspora in preference to Hebrew also reflected the tensions between religious and secular Jewish lifestyles. Many secular Zionists wanted Hebrew as the sole language of Jews, to contribute to a national cohesive identity. Traditionally religious Jews, on the other hand, preferred use of Yiddish, viewing Hebrew as a respected holy language reserved for prayer and religious study. In the early 20th century, Zionist activists in Palestine tried to eradicate the use of Yiddish among Jews in preference to Hebrew, and make its use socially unacceptable.[25] This conflict also reflected the opposing views among secular Jews worldwide, one side seeing Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other Yiddish (and Internationalism) as the means of defining Jewish nationalism. In the 1920s and 1930s, gdud meginéy hasafá, \"the language defendants regiment\", whose motto was ivrí, dabér ivrít \"Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew!\", used to tear down signs written in \"foreign\" languages and disturb Yiddish theatre gatherings.[26] However, according to linguist Ghil\'ad Zuckermann, the members of this group in particular, and the Hebrew revival in general, did not succeed in uprooting Yiddish patterns (as well as the patterns of other European languages Jewish immigrants spoke) within what he calls \"Israeli\", i.e. Modern Hebrew. Zuckermann believes that \"Israeli does include numerous Hebrew elements resulting from a conscious revival but also numerous pervasive linguistic features deriving from a subconscious survival of the revivalists’ mother tongues, e.g. Yiddish.\"[27]After the founding of the State of Israel, a massive wave of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries arrived. In short order, these Mizrachi (literally: Eastern) Jews and their descendants would account for nearly half the Jewish population. While all were at least familiar with Hebrew as a liturgical language, essentially none had any contact with or affinity for Yiddish (some, of Sephardic origin, spoke Ladino, others various Judeo-Arabic vernaculars). Thus, Hebrew emerged as the dominant linguistic common denominator between the different population groups.In religious circles, it is the Ashkenazi Haredi Jews, particularly the Hasidic Jews and the Lithuanian yeshiva world (see Lithuanian Jews), who continue to teach, speak and use Yiddish, making it a language used regularly by hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews today. The largest of these centers are in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem.There is a growing revival of interest in Yiddish culture among secular Israelis, with the flourishing of new proactive cultural organizations like YUNG YiDiSH, as well as Yiddish theater (usually with simultaneous translation to Hebrew and Russian) and young people are taking university courses in Yiddish, some achieving considerable fluency.[28]Former Soviet UnionIn the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat. It was one of the official languages of the Byelorussian SSR, as wellas several agricultural districts of the Galician SSR. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions (technical schools, rabfaks and other university departments). At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged. The vast majority of the Yiddish-language cultural institutions were closed in the late 1930s along with cultural institutions of other ethnic minorities lacking administrative entities of their own. After the Second World War, growing anti-Semitic tendencies in Soviet politics drove Yiddish from most spheres. The last Yiddish-language schools, theaters and publications were closed by the end of the 1940s. It continued to be spoken widely for decades, nonetheless, in areas with compact Jewish populations (primarily in Moldova, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Belarus).In the former Soviet states, presently active Yiddish authors include Yoysef Burg (Chernivtsi1912-2009) and Aleksander Beyderman (b. 1949, Odessa). Publication of an earlier Yiddish periodical (דער פֿרײַנד - der fraynd; lit. \"The Friend\"), was resumed in 2004 with דער נײַער פֿרײַנד (der nayer fraynd; lit. \"The New Friend\", St. Petersburg).RussiaOn the 2010 census, 1,683 people speak Yiddish in Russia, approximately 1% of all the Jews of the Russian Federation.[29] According to Mikhail Shvydkoy, former Minister of Culture of Russia and himself of Jewish origin, Yiddish culture in Russia is gone, and its revival is unlikely.[30]From my point of view, Yiddish culture today is not just fades away and disappears. It is stored as memories, like fragments of phrases such as books, a long time ago that no one reads. ... Yiddish culture is dying and this should be treated calmly. Do not be sorry about something that can not be resurrected—is a thing of perfect oblivion where it should remain. Any artificial culture, the culture without makeup, meaningless. ... Everything that happens with Yiddish culture, transformed into a kind of cabaret—epistolary genre, nice, cute in his ear, eye, but nothing to do with not having a high art, because there is no Naturally, the national soil. In Russia—it is the memory of the departed, sometimes sweet memories. But it\'s the memories of what will never be. Because, perhaps, these memories are always so sharp.[30]Jewish Autonomous OblastThe Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in 1934 in the Russian Far East, with its capital city in Biroofferzhan and Yiddish as its official language. The intention was for the Soviet Jewish population to settle there. Jewish cultural life was revived in Biroofferzhan much earlier than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Yiddish theaters began opening in the 1970s. The newspaper דער ביראָבידזשאנער שטערן (Der Biroofferzhaner Shtern; lit: \"The Biroofferzhan Star\") includes a Yiddish section.[31] Although the official status of the language was not retained by the Russian Federation, its cultural significance is still recognized and bolstered. The First Biroofferzhan International Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Culture was launched in 2007.[32]As of 2010, according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, 97 persons of the JAO population spoke Yiddish.[33]UkraineYiddish was an official language of the Ukrainian People\'s Republic (1917–21).[34][35]Council of EuropeSeveral countries which ratified the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages have included Yiddish in the list of their recognized minority languages: the Netherlands (1996), Sweden (2000), Poland (2009), Romania (2008), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2010). In 2005, Ukraine did not mention Yiddish as such, but \"the language(s) of the Jewish ethnic minority\".[36]SwedenIn June 1999, the Swedish Parliament enacted legislation giving Yiddish legal status[37] as one of the country\'s official minority languages (entering into effect in April 2000). The rights thereby conferred are not detailed, but additional legislation was enacted in June 2006 establishing a new governmental agency, The Swedish National Language Council,[38] the mandate of which instructs it to \"collect, preserve, scientifically research, and spread material about the national minority languages\", naming them all explicitly, including Yiddish. When announcing this action, the government made an additional statement about \"simultaneously commencing completely new initiatives for... Yiddish [and the other minority languages]\".The Swedish government publishes documents in Yiddish, of which the most recent details the national action plan for human rights.[39] An earlier one provides general information about national minority language policies.[40]On 6 September 2007, it became possible to register Internet domains with Yiddish names in the national top-level domain .SE.[41]The first Jews were permitted to reside in Sweden during the late 18th century. The Jewish population in Sweden is estimated at around 20,000. Out of these 2,000-6,000 claim to have at least some knowledge of Yiddish according to various reports and surveys. In 2009, the number of native speakers among these was estimated by linguist Mikael Parkvall to be 750-1,500. It is believed that virtually all native speakers of Yiddish in Sweden today are adults, and most of them elderly.[42]United StatesAt first, in the United States most Jews were of Sephardic origin, and hence did not speak Yiddish. It was not until the mid to late 19th century, as first German, then Eastern European, Jews arrived in the nation, that Yiddish became dominant within the immigrant community. This helped to bond Jews from many countries. פֿאָרווערטס (forverts – Yiddish Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City, and other Yiddish newspapers served as a forum for Jews of all European backgrounds. The Yiddish Forward still appears weekly and is also available in an online edition.[43] It remains in wide distribution, together with דער אַלגעמיינער זשורנאַל (der algemeyner zhurnal – Algemeiner Journal; algemeyner = general) a Lubavitcher newspaper which is also published weekly and appears online.[44] The widest-circulation Yiddish newspapers are probably the weekly issues Der Yid (דער איד = The Jew) and Der Blatt (דער בלאַט; blat = paper) and Di Tzeitung (די צייטונג; = the newspaper) . Several additional newspapers and magazines are in regular production, such as the monthly publications דער שטערן (Der Shtern; shtern = star) and דער בליק (Der Blick; blik = view). (The romanized titles cited in this paragraph are in the form given on the masthead of each publication and may be at some variance both with the literal Yiddish title and the transliteration rules otherwise applied in this article.) Thriving Yiddish theater, especially in the New York City Yiddish Theater District, kept the language vital. Interest in klezmer music provided another bonding mechanism.Most of the Jewish immigrants to the New York metropolitan area during the years of Ellis Island considered Yiddish their native language; however, native Yiddish speakers tended not to pass the language on to their children, who assimilated and spoke English. For example, Isaac Asimov states in his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, that Yiddish was his first and sole spoken language and remained so for about two years after he emigrated to the United States as a small child. By contrast, Asimov\'s younger siblings, born in the United States, never developed any degree of fluency in Yiddish.Many \"Yiddishisms,\" like \"Italianisms\" and \"Spanishisms,\" entered the spoken New York dialect, often used by Jews and non-Jews alike, unaware of the linguistic origin of the phrases. Yiddish words used in English were documented extensively by Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish; see also the list of English words of Yiddish origin.In 1976, the Canadian-born American author Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize in literature. He was fluent in Yiddish, and translated several Yiddish poems and stories into English, including Isaac Bashevis Singer\'s \"Gimpel the Fool\".In 1978, the Polish-born Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, a resident of the United States, received the Nobel Prize in literature.Legal scholars Eugene Volokh and Alex Kozinski argue that Yiddish is “supplanting Latin as the spice in American legal argot.”[45][46]Present U.S. speaker populationIn the 2000 census, 178,945 people in the United States reported speaking Yiddish at home. Of these speakers, 113,515 lived in New York (63.43% of American Yiddish speakers); 18,220 in Florida (10.18%); 9,145 in New Jersey (5.11%); and 8,950 in California (5.00%). The remaining states with speaker populations larger than 1,000 are Pennsylvania (5,445), Ohio (1,925), Michigan (1,945), Massachusetts (2,380), Maryland (2,125), Illinois (3,510), Connecticut (1,710), and Arizona (1,055). The population is largely elderly: 72,885 of the speakers were older than 65, 66,815 were between 18 and 64, and only 39,245 were age 17 or lower.[47] In the six years since the 2000 census, the 2006 American Community Survey reflected an estimated 15 percent decline of people speaking Yiddish at home in the U.S. to 152,515.[48]There are a few predominantly Hasidic communities in the United States in which Yiddish remains the majority language. Kiryas Joel, New York is one such; in the 2000 census, nearly 90% of residents of Kiryas Joel reported speaking Yiddish at home.[49]United KingdomThere are well over 30,000 Yiddish speakers in the United Kingdom, and several thousand children now have Yiddish as a first language. The largest group of Yiddish speakers in Britain reside in the Stamford Hill district of North London, but there are sizable communities in Golders Green, Stoke Newington, Greater Manchester (in parts of Salford; mainly in the Broughton and Kersal areas, North Manchester and in the north Manchester suburb of Prestwich) and Gateshead.[50] The Yiddish readership in the UK is mainly reliant upon imported material from the United States and Israel for newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. However, the London-based weekly Jewish Tribune, has a small section in Yiddish called אידישע טריבונע Idishe Tribune.CanadaMontreal had and to some extent still has one of the most thriving Yiddish communities in North America. Yiddish was Montreal\'s third language (after French and English) for the entire first half of the twentieth century. Der Kanader Adler (\"The Canadian Eagle\", founded by Hirsch Wolofsky), Montreal’s daily Yiddish newspaper, appeared from 1907 to 1988.[51] The Monument National was the center of Yiddish theater from 1896 until the construction of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, inaugurated on September 24, 1967, where the established resident theater, the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, remains the only permanent Yiddish theatre in North America. The theatre group also tours Canada, US, Israel, and Europe.[52]Even though Yiddish has receded, it is the immediate ancestral language of Montrealers like Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen as well as former interim city mayor Michael Applebaum. Besides Yiddish-speaking activists, it remains today the native everyday language of 15,000 Montreal Hassidim.Religious communitiesThe major exception to the decline of spoken Yiddish can be found in Haredi communities all over the world. In some of the more closely knit such communities Yiddish is spoken as a home and schooling language, especially in Hasidic, Litvish or Yeshivish communities such as Brooklyn\'s Borough Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights, and in the communities of Monsey, Kiryas Joel and New Square in New York (over 88% of the population of Kiryas Joel is reported to speak Yiddish at home.[53]) Also in New Jersey Yiddish is widely spoken mostly in Lakewood but also in smaller towns with yeshivos such as Passaic, Teaneck and elsewhere. Yiddish is also widely spoken in the Antwerp Jewish community and in Haredi communities such as the ones in London, Manchester and Montreal. Yiddish is also spoken in many communities throughout Israel. Among most Ashkenazi Haredim, Hebrew is generally reserved for prayer, while Yiddish is used for religious studies as well as a home and business language. In Israel, however, Haredim commonly speak Hebrew, with the notable exception of many Hasidic communities. However, some Haredim who use Modern Hebrew also understand Yiddish. There are some who send their children to schools in which the primary language of instruction is Yiddish. Members of movements such as Satmar Hasidism, who view the commonplace use of Hebrew as a form of Zionism, use Yiddish almost exclusively.Hundreds of thousands of young children around the globe have been, and are still, taught to translate the texts of the Torah into Yiddish. This process is called טײַטשן (taytshn)—\"translating\" . Most Ashkenazi yeshivas\' highest level lectures in Talmud and Halakha are delivered in Yiddish by the rosh yeshivas as well as ethical talks of mussar. Hasidic rebbes generally use only Yiddish to converse with their followers and to deliver their various Torah talks, classes, and lectures. The linguistic style and vocabulary of Yiddish have influenced the manner in which many Orthodox Jews who attend yeshivas speak English. This usage is distinctive enough that it has been dubbed \"YeshivishWhile Hebrew remains the language of Jewish prayer, the Hasidim have mixed some Yiddish into their Hebrew, and are also responsible for a significant secondary religious literature written in Yiddish. For example, the tales about the Baal Shem Tov were written largely in Yiddish. The Torah Talks of the late Lubavitch leaders are published in their original form, Yiddish. In addition, some prayers, such as the Got fun Avrohom, were composed and are recited in Yiddish.Modern Yiddish educationThere has been a resurgence in Yiddish learning in recent times among many from around the world with Jewish ancestry. The language which had lost many of its native speakers during WWII has been making somewhat of a comeback.[54] In Poland, which traditionally had Yiddish speaking communities, a particular museum has begun to revive Yiddish education and culture.[55] Located in Kraków, the Galicia Jewish Museum offers classes in Yiddish Language Instruction and workshops on Yiddish Songs. The museum has taken steps to revive the culture through concerts and events held on site.[56] There are various Universities worldwide which now offer Yiddish programs based on the YIVO Yiddish standard. Many of these programs are held during the summer and are attended by Yiddish enthusiasts from around the world. One such school located within Vilnius University (Vilnius Yiddish Institute) was the first Yiddish center of higher learning to be established in post-Holocaust Eastern Europe. Vilnius Yiddish Institute is an integral part of the four-century-old Vilnius University. Published Yiddish scholar and researcher Dovid Katz is among the Faculty.[57] Other schools which offer Yiddish programs include Tel Aviv University,[58] Brandeis University,[59] Monash University, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation,[60] University College London,[61] University of Oxford,[62] University of Maryland,[63] YIVO, New York University,[64] Hampshire College campus at Amherst[65] (home of the National Yiddish Book Center), Binghamton University,[66] Harvard University,[67] Stanford University,[68] University of Pennsylvania,[69] Indiana University, Bloomington,[70] The Ohio State University,[71] University of Düsseldorf,[72] University of Chicago,[73] Columbia University,[74] Vassar College,[75] UMass Amherst,[76] McGill University,[77] UCLA,[78] Emory University in Atlanta, University of Virginia,[79] the University of Manitoba,[80] and the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil.[81] Despite this growing popularity among many American Jews,[82] finding opportunities for practical use of Yiddish is becoming increasingly difficult, and thus many students have trouble learning to speak the language.[83] One solution has been the establishment of a farm in Goshen, New York for Yiddishists.[84] R. Ben-Ari, a well-known actor and one of the original founders of Habimah in Moscow, before that world-famous ensemble left the Soviet Union, ultimately to become the National Theater of Israel, died in Moscow this week, according to information received here today. He was 68. Born in Moscow, he came to the United States with the Habimah when that group first toured this country in 1926, but, unlike other members of the troupe, stayed on here. As a Hebrew actor with Habimah, he was especially known for his role in “The Dybbyk,” the play for which Habimah was widely hailed. Mr. Ben-Ari appeared here on the Yiddish stage and in English on television. He became a well-known theatrical director and wrote the history of the Habimah Theater in Yiddish. He also lectured and wrote widely, mostly in the leading Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers in the world. More recently, he was lecturer on drama at the Brandeis Institute in California. He had gone to Moscow to visit a brother, and was stricken with a heart attack there. Efim Raikin Ben-Ari (15 July 1897 – 2 January 1962) was a Russian-born actor, stage director, and teacher, mostly in America. He co-founded the Habima Theatre in Moscow in the 1920s, acted on Broadway, founded the only Hebrew-language theatre in America, and taught and directed for four decades.[1] Early LIfe and Career Ben-Ari, whose family name was Raikin, was born near Kiev (now in Ukraine).[2] He took his father\'s last name as his first name and called himself Raikin Ben-Ari, or \"Raikin, son of a lion.\"[3] After training at a polytechnic school in the sciences, Ben-Ari became interested in theatre.[4] He co-founded the famed Habima Theatre in Moscow, a Hebrew-language theatre, at a time when revolutionary Russia did not look kindly on Jewish-oriented activities.[5] The company produced a landmark production of The Dybbuk, a play which has gone on to be a staple of Jewish theatre. In the 1920s, Ben-Ari and the Habima company traveled to New York and produced The Dybbuk on Broadway. A schism formed in the company and some members went to Palestine, reestablishing Habima there, where it continues (now in Israel) to this day as the premiere Hebrew theatre company.[6] Other members of the company, including Ben-Ari, remained in the United States. Ben-Ari founded the Pargod Theatre, the only Hebrew-language theatre in America.[7] A follower of the work of Constantin Stanislavski, Ben-Ari subsequently taught acting in Erwin Piscator\'s theatre workshop at the New School for Social Research, where his students included Walter Matthau, Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Tony Franciosa, and Rod Steiger.[8] Eventually, in 1948, Ben-Ari moved to California and established a workshop there and also appeared in film and television roles in productions as disparate as Adventures of Superman, Al Capone, and Combat! . Ben-Ari was appointed drama director of the Brandeis Institute in Simi Valley, California, where he taught for many years.[9] He died of a heart attack while visiting his brother in Moscow on January 2, 1968. He was survived by his wife Anna (\"Nussia\") and daughter Renah.[10]