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A review of the book, Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem and Peretz by Ken Frieden is presented. In contrast to the forgetfulness and neglect that is the lot of many Yiddish writers in the 20th century, the classic writers of Yiddish literature of the late 19th and early 20th century enjoy a good deal of fine scholarly attention. In this book, Frieden takes as his subjects these three bilingual writers, whose work symbolize a turning point in the history of Yiddish literature.

Soviet Yiddish, especially various peculiarities of its lexicon, has attracted the attention of many scholars and writers. Books and periodicals published in the Soviet Union, coupled with immense archival material, give a picture of this variety of modern Yiddish as well as of the theoretical and practical approaches of its architects. For all that, the history of Soviet Yiddish language planning and the features of Soviet Yiddish have not yet been comprehensively studied. This book analyses the major sociolinguistic and linguistic features of Yiddish Soviet-speak. As main constants which have determined the peculiarities of Soviet Yiddish, the following are considered: the changes in the social structure of Soviet Jewry and the associated acculturation and assimilation; the decline of Yiddish in contact situations with dominant languages — Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian; the impact of overall Soviet language-planning policy; and the Soviet Yiddish language planners' efforts as a by-product of government-sponsored activity among Yiddish-speakers.

Literature is similar to an organism. It is in constant motion, ever evolving, keeping with the changing times. It is a special skill to be able to transform this from the traditional to something fresh and modern. It involves a very intricate web of cultural, social, and psychological aspects. Yiddish literature is an entirely distinct class on its own, just as its traditions and culture are unique. Literature is a tool to preserve and maintain these traditions intact, in language that is their own, such as Jewish and Aramaic. It is set in religious and spiritual aspects; it gives a feel of the ancient, mixed with new and modern concepts. This book examines the history and origins of Yiddish literature, tracing back the roots in order to understand and appreciate its form and content.

Kav hayosher is one of the largest collections that are of Eastern European Yiddish origin but is of old literature in form. The author himself spoke Eastern Yiddish, and wrote it in both Hebrew and Yiddish, publishing it in a bi-lingual form. The two forms, though similar in content, still vary in some aspects due to language. Western influence was not far from the background of the writer, as his family members were Western Yiddish authors, and that allowed his work to be adaptive and flexible for whatever transition it may require. He had devoted himself to studying the old literary style extensively, being well read in its most distinguished publications. His commitment to maintaining the traditional old literature was impressive.

The writings that were analyzed in the earlier chapters were part of what is termed Easternization, and were altered at different levels from each other. Simkhes hanefesh was the least transformed to Eastern Yiddish forms. Kav Hayosher, in comparison, although one of the earlier works published, was said to be a little more altered, but still with some level of limit. The irony of things is that the Tsene rene was the earliest of the three works; however it was also the most extensively changed and modernized. This chapter examines the degrees of Easternization, and how it affects the final product. It is by examining from the most altered to the least altered form that a more accurate and precise scrutiny can be done.

In the prototype works that are being examined, there are some observations with regard to orthography and phonology. The writings were still considered conservative in some level, based on orthography, similar to the late eighteenth-century Eastern Yiddish literature. They were clearly more focused on the removal of most of the unstressed and certain stressed vowels. In contrast to this, a complete production of all stressed and unstressed words were found on Western Yiddish and modern High German patterns. This was influenced by the Old Yiddish spelling system, to which they continued to adhere. The evolution of the system, though observed to be at a slow rate, was none the less steady and precise.

A limited change with regards to lexicon was noted in the three featured writings. What is notable is the replacement of Western, both the old and modern components, into Eastern Yiddish. Although this is only very minimal, it is still of substantial impact. It is as if the old lexicon nature was to be preserved in this context, as it is more meaningful and comprehensible to an Eastern Yiddish speaker. This provided an archaic style in the midst of modern Yiddish forms, most notable in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was an attempt to maintain the treasured traditions and ways of the old times.

This chapter introduces a periodization scheme, to establish a chronological analysis of the events that happened during the evolution of modern Yiddish literature. It consists of major histological landmarks coupled with the published works, in order to understand the culture and influences attached to the writings, likened to evidence of its time. Therefore a huge amount of data and writings were gathered, in order to find substantial links between gaps in time. The chapter enumerates the various publications that had significant influence in their respective eras. Fast forward to the nineteenth and early twentieth century, where the literature is as new and as polished as ever, ready to embrace new cultural and social structures it may encounter.

In the 1930s, conflicts between competing groups of Yiddish language planners intensified. Adherents of the further Russification of Yiddish (at the expense of Hebrew-Aramaic and German components) crossed swords with the Kiev and Moscow cultivators of a ‘pure proletarian Yiddish’. The climactic event was the 1934 conference in Kiev which accepted basic principles of lexical innovation in Soviet literary Yiddish which, as a matter of ideology, rejected massive direct borrowings from Russian. Despite the ostensible rejection of Russification, the conference demonstrated that, in practice, nearly all lexical innovations, whether coined on the basis of Hebrew, German, or Slavonic elements, were loanwords or calques from Russian. Three years later, in 1937, various aspects of Soviet Yiddish language planning were once again discussed on the eve of a conference, scheduled to be convened in Birobidzhan. The conference never took place, due to the purges of 1937, when many Yiddish activists perished in the Gulag. This chapter discusses the Soviet Yiddish Empire of the early 1930s, the Odessa language, and similarities between Soviet Yiddish and Soviet German.

In 1938, many Yiddish institutions were closed and the system of Yiddish education was curtailed. At the same time, the proportion of Soviet Jews who declared Yiddish as their first language dropped from 72.6% in 1926 to 41% in 1939. Russian was the primary source of virtually all lexical innovations associated with the realities of Soviet life, in particular with the names of political and state bodies, various institutions, offices, and campaigns. The Holocaust and the post-war liquidation of the Jewish intellectual elite in the Stalinist Soviet Union dramatically marginalized Yiddish culture. This chapter examines the sociolinguistic problems of the 1940s to 1980s, concentrating mostly on the period of the Moscow magazine Sovetish hejmland, the Yiddish newspaper Ejnikajt (Unity), and the publication of the 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary.

The zeal displayed by Soviet Jewish authorities and those involved in language planning to combine the development of Yiddish culture with the objectives of Soviet totalitarian ideology, led, in the 1920s and 1930s, to an ambivalent result. On the one hand, the Bolshevik revolution paved the way for an unprecedented flowering of Yiddish printing, schooling, and creative activity. On the other hand, ideologization and insipidity, which infested all forms of work among Soviet Jews, repelled and eventually reduced the clientele of Yiddish culture. It was Russian that became the principal force bearing on the restructuring of the Yiddish vocabulary and its morpho-syntactic and semantic make-up. Under the influence of Russian, Soviet Yiddish adopted a number of peculiar word-formation models. The experience of the Soviet Yiddish spelling reforms demonstrates a particular fragility of such world-wide dispersed languages as Yiddish. All in all, the general decline of Soviet Yiddish during the post-war period was characterized by the further Russification of the spoken language.