To my dear cousin from my America,

I can’t focus on my yiddish exercices tonight, too tired… but listening to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yiddish speech in Stockholm (1978) makes me feel so good! 

 

“ Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

People ask me often, ‘Why do you write in a dying language?’ (…) Yiddish may be a dying language but it is the only language I know well. Yiddish is my mother language and a mother is never really dead.”

For the entire traduction:yiddish word of the week

You told me in your last letter that only religious people from Brooklyn speak it nowadays…maybe your right! Hopfully, your soon to be born son may have the chance to learn it! 

I give you the address: you can do it on line! http://yiddishweb.com/nouveau-cours-de-yiddish-a-distance/

And to answer your question, why Yiddish? I will answer: Why not? One morning it came to me,it was a sunny Saturday, i had nothing better to do and i entered the the Medem library and I made my decision, I wanted to discover the joy and mysteries of Yiddish.

I confess it’s hard reading it because i’ve never studied Hebrew before but hearing it’s just great!

I found this video of Prof. Barbara Henry of the University of Washington’s Stroum Jewish Studies and Slavic Languages & Literature Department .

I so agree with her. I hope it will touch you as much as it did to me!

 

 

To complete your decision of learning Yiddish with your child:


The Petit Nicolas has just been tranlated in Yiddish! That’s a good sign!

 

 

To finish in music, the song i’m learning at the moment:” The bulbes song” interpreted by Korean children!

 

With love 

Your dear French cousin!

Zayt gezunt!