On Jul 9, 12:40=A0pm, a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Aaron Kuperman) wrote:
> a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
> : On Jul 8, 11:56=3DA0pm, bm2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> : > Assume No Hitler, and that a war vs the Red Menace doesn't take the
> : > place of OTL WWII: at most, a limited Cold War of sorts and perhaps
> : > some sort of dustup in the Pacific with Japan vs Whoever. Stalin, if
> : > he gets around to seriously persecuting Soviet Jews, doesn't kill
mor=
e
> : > than, say, 25% of them.
> : >
> : > Under this sort of scenario, what odds that a high percentage of the
> : > Yiddish-speaking Jews of eastern Europe still are doing so in 2008?
>
> : Close to zero.
>
> : > Given nationalist pressures to assimilate, and efforts to make them
> : > proper Soviets in the USSR, possibly at gulag-point, one would think
> : > there would be a serious drop in the number of Yiddish-speakers:
>
> : Did you ever bother to check OTL reality? The Russian Jews had been
> : moving out of the traditional 'Yiddish-speaking' areas even during the
> : Russian Civil War. And for the person to get job and to be 'upward
> : mobile', this person had to speak a language of majority. Russian and/
> : or Ukrainian.
>
> : > and
> : > not only by assimilation, but also by emigration (in a WWII-free
> : > world, how long does the US keep its immigration as restricted as it
> : > was during the 30's?).
> : >
>
> : Even longer?
>
> : > Even with no Holocaust, it seems likely that the old world of
Yiddish=
-
> : > speaking ghettos and shtetls would still be a largely "lost world"
by
> : > the present date: how far assimilated would the Jews of Poland,
> : > Romania, the USSR, etc. be? (Those who hadn't moved to the US,
> : > Australia, France, etc.)
> : >
>
> : The ghettos did not exist in the SU so this part of a question does
> : not make sense.
>
> : > OTOH, might the Soviets, always happy enough to ID their population
b=
y
> : > nationality, decide that the "Jewish nationality", although of
course
> : > having to learn Russian in school like anyone else, needed their
> : > culture protected and promoted in the usual faux-multicultural style
> : > ("traditional" clothes and dances, godawful socialist realist
> : > paintings, etc.) for international consumption, including the use of
> : > the Yiddish language?
>
> : Games of this type mostly came to the end in the early 50's. Of
> : course, Jewish Autonomous Oblast remained in existence. Only
> : approximately 1% of its population are Jews.
>
> Yiddish remains alive and well among many orthodox Jews both in Israel
an=
d
> outside of Israel. There are probably more children speaking Yiddish in
> the USA than at any time in the past, and there is a growing literature
> serving that community.
This is all fine but, AFAIK, neither Israel nor the US are qualifying
as 'Eastern Europe' and even less so as the 'SU' so how all this is
relevant?
> If there is no WWII (or at least, no holocaust),
> there would have been more a higher percentage of orthodox Jews within
th=
e
> Jewish community (secular Jews were more likely to survive for a
> combination of geographic, political and social reasons).
This _could_ apply to no-WWII Poland but not to the SU. Besides,
'Yiddish-speaking' can mean 2 different things:
1. People who _know_ Yiddish but do not extensively use it in everyday
life as the "1st language". This was, to a big degree, the case with
the older Jewsih population of the SU (those born before or soon after
Russian Revolution). Younger generations, in general, knew less, not
more.
2. People who use it as the 1st language. The question is why would a
number of the Orthodox predominantly Yiddish-speaking Jews in no-war
Poland be increasing? Economically, they would be at disadvantage
outside their communities.
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