<randy.mcdonald@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:29419f3b-cce8-4921-9684-75a1622f23d7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jul 8, 11:56 pm, bm2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
> [deletia]
>
> 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?
> 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: 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?).
I'd separate the Soviet Jews from the non-Soviet central and eastern
European Jews. Soviet Jews, as has been noted elsewhere in this
thread, were assimilating strongly to Russian culture even before the
Revolution.
Yiddish-speaking Jews in non-Soviet Europe would be different, with
their relatively and absolutely larger numbers and the existence of
strong barriers to assimilation via prejudice and residential
segregation and whatnot.
- Sorry, but a WWII-less world also means a Nazi-less world. And the
German
Jews were not segregated, and a sizable part of them were assimilating
fast,
before the Nazis came to power. There was prejudice, but for the majority
of
the Germans it was selective: a traditionally-clad Polish-Jewish immigrant
street peddler, with his gibberish Yiddish, would be much less welcome
anywhere than a German-speaking German professional dressed like a German,
who also happened to be Jewish as to his faith or, even less im****tantly,
as
to his ancestry only.
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