On Jul 10, 5:30=A0pm, a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Aaron Kuperman) wrote:
> a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 [...]
> : On Jul 9, 12:40=3DA0pm, a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Aaron Kuperman) wrote:
> : > If there is no WWII (or at least, no holocaust),
> : > there would have been more a higher percentage of orthodox Jews
withi=
n th=3D
> : 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 =A0"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.
>
> If there is no WWII (or at least, no holocaust), the large
> Yiddish-speaking populations in Eastern Europe, outside of the USSR,
> survive intact. Absent a coercive policy of linguistic assimilation (as
> per the USSR),
AFAIK, assimilation in the SU started happening before any coherent
policy was in place: the young Jews wanted to get out of the Pale
(something they wanted to do but really could not even in the late
XIX). Russian was a natural language of communication.
>the younger generations of the orthodox will stay
> yiddish-speaking.
I doubt that it would work this way in a long run, unless you are
assuming that most of the young Jews in Poland, Hungary and Rumania
were totally lacking ambition.
>Unlike secular Jews, whose fertility radically declines
> as they become more secular and more affluent, Orthodox Jewish fertility
> is both high and independent of external events (excluding something
like
> genocide or plague that directly reduces survival rates).
>
The issue is ability to sustain themselves economically.
> =A0While Yiddish is a disadvantage economically in Polish, or Lithanian,
=
or
> Hungarian society (or in Israeli or in greater-Brooklyn society of OTL),
2 last examples are substantially different from the first ones
because they involve combination of the limited numbers (at least in
Brooklyn) AND nanny state.
> being Orthodox (looking funny, not working on Saturday, keeping kosher)
> has such a greater impact that the negative impact of speaking Yiddish
is
> not a problem (in fact virtually all Eastern European Jews were always
at
> least bi-lingual in the local language, it wasn't language that held
them
> back but the fact they were orthodox Jews).
It all works in the close communities. Of course, pre-WWII Poland and
Lithuania were good examples but for how long these models would work
is a separate question.
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