Re: Future of Yiddish Eastern Europe in no-WWII world

Lee Ratner wrote:
>>
>      I agree with you Randy. I think that Soviet Jews will eventually
> speak Russian and not Yiddish or might end up being bilingual. In

I'd have to partially disagree here. _Russian_ Jews will probably be
predominantly Russian speaking. But that's an immigrant community,
almost all of Russia was outside the Pale of Settlement.  But Ukrainian
and Belarusian Jews?  Remember, OTL the entirety of the Pale was
occupied by the Nazis and subjected to genocide and the destruction
of Jewish cultural infrastructure.  The post-war Jewish population of
these lands was composed of survivors, hideouts, and returnees from the
east. Add in Stalin's abolition of Yiddish and "Jewish Nationality"
organizations in the late 1940s, and you have an almost total
destruction of the Jewish root culture in the region. ATL, well,
Communism is still going to wreck some havoc on traditional Jewish
life, but nothing near OTL. A lot of Jews will move out of this
region seeking op****tunities, but we are talking about a high birth
rate culture, so Yiddish culture could probably preserve itself in
situ, even as it sends out lots of assimilated offspring.

Old Toby
Least Known Dog on the Net