The Ephrussi family ( French pronunciation: [ɛfʁysi] ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish noble banking family. The family's bank and properties were seized by the Nazi authorities after the 1938 " Anschluss ", the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany .
78-482: The Ephrussi family progenitor was Charles Joachim Ephrussi (1792–1864) from Berdichev , Ukraine . He made a fortune controlling grain distribution beginning in the free port of Odesa (then Russian Empire , now Ukraine) and later controlled large-scale oil resources across Crimea and the Caucasus . By 1860, the family was the world's largest exporter of wheat . Charles Joachim's eldest son, Leonid (d. 1877), founded
156-615: A khutor (remote settlement) there. However the etymology of the name Berdychiv is not known. In 1483, Crimean Tatars destroyed the settlement. In 1545, Berdyczów was mentioned as a property of the Polish-Lithuanian magnate Tyszkiewicz family , and in a 1546 document settling the border between Poland and Lithuania within the Polish–Lithuanian union . According to the Union of Lublin (1569), Berdyczów passed to Poland within
234-590: A Jewish forced labour battalion and temporarily the Stalag 339 prisoner-of-war camp in the town. Berdychiv was the hometown of Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman , who worked as a war correspondent. Grossman's mother was murdered in the massacre. He wrote a detailed description of the events for publication in The Black Book , edited by Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg , which dealt with the German treatment of Soviet Jews in
312-700: A bank in Odesa, while his brother Ignaz (1829–1899) moved to the Austrian capital, Vienna , where he established the Ephrussi & Co. banking house in 1856. In 1872, he was elevated to the noble rank of Ritter by Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph I . In 1871, Leonid, together with his younger half-brothers Michel (1845–1914) and Maurice Ephrussi (1849–1916), founded a branch in Paris, followed by subsidiaries in London and Athens. During
390-524: A central poste restante (post office box) of the region. Later, because of the phrase being used in a popular poem by Juliusz Słowacki , "Pisz na Berdyczów!" acquired a second meaning as a brush-off; "send me a letter to nowhere" or "leave me alone". According to the census of 1789, Jews constituted 75% of Berdychiv's population (1,951 out of 2,640, of whom 246 were liquor dealers, 452 houseowners, 134 merchants, 188 artisans, 150 clerks and 56 idlers). In 1797, Prince Radziwill granted seven Jewish families
468-534: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,
546-485: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in
624-420: A printing house was founded at the monastery, which in 1777 printed the oldest Polish encyclopedia for children. In 1768, Kazimierz Pulaski defended the city with his 700 men surrounded by royal army during Bar Confederation . The town underwent rapid development after king Stanisław August Poniatowski , under pressure from the powerful Radziwiłł family , granted it the unusual right to organize ten fairs
702-671: A unit of the Higher SS and Police Leaders". The ghetto was liquidated on 5 October 1941, when all the inhabitants were murdered. Eyewitnesses stated that Ukrainian auxiliary police aided the 25-member shooting squad in corralling Jews into the ghetto, policing it, and killing those who attempted to escape. One witness to a mass killing of Jews in Berdychiv said, "They had to wear their festivity-dresses. Then their clothes and valuables were taken. The pits were dug and filled in by war prisoners who were executed shortly after." According to figures from
780-567: A year. This made Berdychiv one of the most important trading and banking centers in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the Russian Empire. At the time, the saying "Pisz na Berdyczów!" ('Send letters to Berdychiv!') had an idiomatic meaning; because merchants from all over Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and the rest of eastern and central Europe were sure to visit the town within two or three months of each other, it became
858-626: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and
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#1732894502457936-475: Is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using
1014-468: Is a family memoir of the Ephrussi family by British potter Edmund de Waal , whose grandmother was Elisabeth Ephrussi. Berdichev Berdychiv ( Ukrainian : Бердичів , IPA: [berˈdɪt͡ʃ⁽ʲ⁾iu̯] ) is a historic city in Zhytomyr Oblast , northern Ukraine . It serves as the administrative center of Berdychiv Raion within the oblast. It is 44 km (27 mi) south of
1092-480: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By
1170-579: Is considered to be a variation of Ephrati , as a reference to "Ephraim" in 1 Samuel 1:1 , a Hebrew family name attested in the 14th century in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) as Efrati and later in central Europe and Russia as Ephrati or Ephrussi. Notable members of the Ephrussi family include: Notable properties of the family included: Descendants of the Kishinev banker Joseph Ephrusi (Efrusi): The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010)
1248-444: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and
1326-506: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in
1404-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups
1482-493: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,
1560-554: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in
1638-650: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. – Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in
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#17328945024571716-587: The Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However,
1794-620: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in
1872-604: The Holocaust . Originally meant for publication in the Soviet Union, it was banned there; one volume was eventually published in Bucharest in 1947. The original manuscript is in the archive of Yad Vashem , Jerusalem. A detailed account of the massacre as told by the narrator's mother appears in a fictionalized context in Grossman's novel Life and Fate , which is widely available in an English translation by Robert Chandler . During
1950-568: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and
2028-537: The Napoleonic Wars in 1812–1814. Jews were a major driving force of the town's commerce in the first half of the 19th century, founding a number of trading companies (some traded internationally) and banking establishments, and serving as agents of the neighboring estates of Polish nobility ( szlachta ). As the ideas of Haskalah influenced parts of the Jewish communities, a large group of Maskilim formed in Berdychiv in
2106-525: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of
2184-645: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . It was granted city rights in 1593 and was a private town , administratively located in the Żytomierz County in the Kijów Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province . The fortified Carmelite monastery was built from 1627 to 1642 with funding from Janusz Tyszkiewicz Łohojski . In 1643, Bishop Andrzej Szołdrski laid the foundation stone of the Church of
2262-1113: The Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022. In addition to the Ukrainian Бердичів ( Berdychiv ), in other languages the name of the city is Polish : Berdyczów , Yiddish : באַרדיטשעװ , romanized : Barditshev and Russian : Берди́чев , romanized : Berdichev . [REDACTED] Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1430–1569 [REDACTED] Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569–1793 [REDACTED] Russian Empire 1793–1917 [REDACTED] Ukrainian People's Republic 1917-1918 [REDACTED] Ukrainian State 1918 [REDACTED] Directory of Ukraine 1918-1919 [REDACTED] Soviet Ukraine 1919-1920 [REDACTED] Second Polish Republic 1920 [REDACTED] Soviet Ukraine 1920–1922 [REDACTED] Soviet Union 1922–1941 [REDACTED] Nazi Germany 1941–1944 ( occupation ) [REDACTED] Soviet Union 1944-1991 [REDACTED] Ukraine 1991–present The territory on which
2340-723: The Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, on 16 March 2022, Berdychiv was damaged by Russian air strikes. A few buildings were torn down. Distribution of the population by native language according to the 2001 census : Alphabetically by surname. Pseudonyms treated as one word. Some sources erroneously claim that the pianist Vladimir Horowitz was born in Berdychiv. Horowitz's birth certificate unequivocally gives Kyiv as his birthplace. Yiddish language Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit. ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit. ' Judeo-German ' )
2418-480: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')
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2496-554: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on
2574-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish
2652-492: The 1820s. In 1847, 23,160 Jews resided in Berdychiv and by 1861 the number doubled to 46,683. Berdychiv became the city with the largest share of Jewish population in Ukraine and the Russian Empire. The May Laws of 1882 and other government persecutions affected Jewish population and in 1897, out of the town's population of 53,728, 41,617 (about 80%) were Jewish. 58% of Jewish males and 32% of Jewish females were literate. In 1840
2730-629: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that
2808-544: The 19th century, the family possessed vast wealth and owned many castles, palaces, and estates in Europe. The family members were known for their connoisseurship, intellectual interests, and their huge collections of art. Leonid's son Charles Ephrussi (1849–1905), a well-known art historian, collector and editor, became a model for the character of Charles Swann in Marcel Proust 's novel In Search of Lost Time . The family name
2886-580: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into
2964-586: The Carmelite printing house was moved to Zhytomyr . In 1831 local schools were closed down by Tsarist authorities as punishment for the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising , and in 1864 the Carmelite monastery was dissolved as punishment for the January Uprising . In 1837, the Związek Ludu Polskiego [ pl ] Polish resistance organization was founded in the city. The banking industry
3042-529: The Immaculate Conception, Saint Michael Archangel and Saint John the Baptist. Berdyczów became a Catholic pilgrimage destination and an important defensive fortress on the eastern flank of Western Christian civilization. The monastery was captured and plundered by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1647. In 1687, Teresa Tyszkiewicz married Krzysztof Stanisław Zawisza [ pl ] , and Berdyczów passed to
3120-773: The National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide published the National Book of Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Zhytomyr region . The book has 1116 pages and consists of three sections. According to historical records, more than 2490 people died during Holodomor in 1932-1933. Most civilians from areas near the border did not have a chance to evacuate when the Nazis began their invasion on 22 June 1941. Berdychiv
3198-503: The Poles to the Russian 1st Cavalry Army , which then carried out a massacre of hundreds of wounded Polish and Ukrainian soldiers plus Red Cross workers and nuns, who were burned alive in the local hospital. In the 1920s, the Yiddish language was officially recognized and, beginning in 1924, the city had a Ukrainian court of law that conducted its affairs in Yiddish. In 1923, Berdychiv became
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3276-548: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and
3354-489: The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, a total of 10,656 individuals had been murdered here by the end of 1943. The Nazis likely killed 20,000 to 30,000 Jews in Berdychiv, but a 1973 Ukrainian-language article about the history of Berdychiv says, "The Gestapo killed 38,536 people." ( Ukrainian : "Гестапівці стратили 38 536 чоловік." ) The Germans operated a Nazi prison, a forced labour camp,
3432-543: The Zawisza family of Łabędź coat of arms . Krzysztof Stanisław Zawisza erected a new manor house in the city. After the death of Krzysztof Stanisław Zawisza in 1721, the town passed to his daughter Barbara Franciszka, wife of Prince Mikołaj Faustyn Radziwiłł [ pl ] , thus passing to the Radziwiłł family . Berdyczów flourished during the rule of Kings Augustus III of Poland and Stanisław August Poniatowski . In 1760
3510-594: The administrative center of the oblast, Zhytomyr . Its population is approximately 73,046 (2022 estimate). The area has seen various cultural influences and political changes over time, from its early settlement by the Chernyakhov culture to its position within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later, the Russian Empire . Berdychiv was an important trading and banking center in its heyday, but
3588-580: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,
3666-457: The center of the district and district of the same name, and in 1937 it entered the Zhytomyr region. The Soviet authorities closed most of the town's synagogues by the 1930s. All remaining Jewish cultural and educational institutions were suspended in the second half of the 1930s, before the beginning of World War II . The city suffered from the man-made famine Holodomor of 1932-1933 . In 2008,
3744-420: The city is located was inhabited as early as the 2nd millennium BC. Bronze Age settlements and the remains of two settlements of the Chernyakhov culture were discovered here. In 1430, Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas (великий князь литовський Вітовт) granted the rights over the area to Kalinik, the procurator (намісник) of Putyvl and Zvenyhorodka , and it is believed that his servant named Berdich founded
3822-602: The communists and was included within Soviet Ukraine in October 1919. On 26 April 1920, it was the site of a battle in which Poles defeated the Soviets and liberated the city during the Kyiv offensive and Polish–Soviet War . Polish troops also liberated dozens of Polish hostages, who were brought by the Soviets to the town from Zhytomyr. After another battle, on 7 June 1920, it was lost by
3900-548: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer
3978-528: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for
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#17328945024574056-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"
4134-627: The greatest novelists to write in the English language , was born in Berdychiv. Around the turn of the 20th century, Berdychiv counted some 80 synagogues and batei midrash , and was famous for its cantors. Until World War I , the natural growth was balanced by the emigration. After the February Revolution , during the Russian Civil War and Ukrainian War of Independence , in 1918–19, Berdychiv's mayor and chairman of its Jewish community
4212-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in
4290-418: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
4368-439: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish
4446-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It
4524-457: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,
4602-429: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had
4680-432: The monopoly privilege of the cloth trade in the town. By the end of the 18th century, Berdychiv became an important center of Hasidism . As the town grew, a number of noted scholars served as rabbis there, including Lieber the Great, Joseph the Harif and the Tzadik Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (the author of Kedushat Levi ), who lived and taught there until his death in 1809. See Berditchev (Hasidic dynasty) . Berdychiv
4758-586: The most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by
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#17328945024574836-413: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to
4914-407: The number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of
4992-605: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in
5070-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with
5148-401: The town became impoverished after the banking industry moved to Odesa in the mid-19th century. Berdychiv was also a significant center of Jewish history, with a large Jewish population and an important role in the development of Hasidism. However, during World War II , the Nazis brutally massacred thousands of Jews in Berdychiv. The city has seen continued conflict, with damage sustained during
5226-463: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on
5304-417: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this
5382-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards
5460-586: The world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ( taytsh ), a variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become
5538-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged
5616-513: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction
5694-724: Was also one of the centers of the conflict between Hasidim and Mitnagdim . In 1793, after the Second Partition of Poland and the annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine to the Russian Empire , Berdychiv became part of the Volyn Province as a town of Zhitomirsky Uyezd . In 1798, it had 864 houses and 4820 people. The town was the administrative centre of the Berdichevsky Uyezd , a part of the Kyiv Governorate (1796–1925). Trade began to decline since 1798, however it revived during
5772-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to
5850-487: Was moved from Berdychiv to Odessa (a major port city) after 1850, and the town became impoverished again in a short period of time. In 1846, the town had 1893 buildings, 69 of which were brick-made, 11 streets, 80 alleys, and four squares. Honoré de Balzac visited it in 1850 and noted that its unplanned development made it resemble the dance of a polka as some buildings leaned left while others leaned right. In 1857, Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad , regarded as one of
5928-565: Was occupied by the German Army from 7 July 1941 to 5 January 1944 . An "extermination" German SS unit was established in Berdychiv in early July 1941 and a Jewish ghetto was set up. It was stated in one of the Einsatzgruppen reports that on "Sept. 1, and 2, 1941, leaflets and inflammatory pamphlets were distributed by Jews in Berdychiv. As the perpetrators could not be found, 1,303 Jews, among them 875 Jewesses over 12 years, were executed by
6006-579: Was the Bundist leader David Petrovsky (Lipetz). As mayor he managed to prevent a planned multi-day pogrom in Berdychiv by haidamaks from the Kuren Smerti (Clan of Death) , thus saving thousands of lives. After the fall of Tsarist Russia, the town was under control of the newly formed Ukrainian People's Republic from 1917 to 1919 (and briefly the Ukrainian State in 1918), before it eventually fell to
6084-498: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. – Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to
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