99-457: Galician Jews or Galitzianers ( Yiddish : גאַליציאַנער , romanized : Galitsianer ) are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating and developed in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary western Ukraine ( Lviv , Ivano-Frankivsk , and Ternopil Oblasts) and from south-eastern Poland ( Subcarpathian and Lesser Poland ). Galicia proper, which
198-534: 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,
297-631: A dictator". Rydz lacked the moral authority of Piłsudski, and the Piłsudskiites were bitterly divided after his death in 1935. The ruling regime was divided between the Mościcki faction (known as the "President's men" or the "Castle group"), made up mainly of civilians, and Rydz's group, known as the "Marshal's men", mostly old comrades of Piłsudski and professional officers. Besides these two major groups, there were also supporters of Sławek and other disgruntled Piłsudskiite groups, which were marginalized after
396-485: 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
495-491: A lot of stubborn energy. I could recommend him to everybody as a commander of an army, I am however not sure if he possesses sufficient abilities to function as commander-in-chief in a war between two states." During his internment in Romania, Śmigły-Rydz initiated the creation of a Polish underground originating from officers who were loyal to the memory of Piłsudski. Still in Romania, on 27 October, he relinquished his function as
594-510: A serious political player by the end of the year. As a result of this agreement, Śmigły-Rydz was to become the de facto leader of Poland until the outbreak of the war, whereas Mościcki remained influential by continuing as president. From 1935, Rydz saw himself rapidly elevated in rank and position. On 15 July 1936, he was officially awarded the title of "Second Man in the State after the President" by
693-800: A talented landscape and portrait painter by professors and critics. Drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in July 1914, Rydz was transferred in August to the Polish Legions and fought in World War I in the famous Polish 1st Brigade of Józef Piłsudski . He took part in numerous engagements against the Imperial Russian Army in the region of the Southern Vistula and rose quickly in rank. By 1916, he
792-407: 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 the most frequently used designation in
891-626: 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
990-480: 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
1089-493: 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
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#17328589697961188-506: 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
1287-588: 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
1386-493: 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 ,
1485-554: 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
1584-684: The Bolsheviks . Among the victorious engagements, he captured the cities of Wilno (Vilnius) and Dünaburg . Following his victories on the field, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Latvian armed forces and soon liberated Latgale from the Red Army . Subsequently, he annihilated the Red Army's 12th Army and took Kiev . After the Bolshevik counterattack led the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw, Rydz commanded
1683-650: 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
1782-620: 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
1881-740: The Holocaust . Most survivors migrated to Israel , the United States , the United Kingdom or Australia . In 1959, the census showed 29,701 Jews were living in Lviv province . A small number have remained in Ukraine or Poland . In the popular perception, Galitzianers were considered to be more emotional and prayerful than their rivals, the Litvaks , who thought of them as irrational and uneducated. They, in turn, held
1980-568: 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
2079-525: 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
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#17328589697962178-519: The Polish Military Organization ( POW ) and adopted the nom de guerre Śmigły ("Swift", "Deft"), which he later officially added to his surname . In October 1918 Rydz joined Ignacy Daszyński 's socialist government in Lublin as minister of war. Having been promoted to brigadier general , he emphasized that on accepting the ministerial post he was to be seen as a deputy of Piłsudski. It
2277-670: The Polish pogrom in Lviv , wrote Alexander Prusin. Nevertheless, as noted by Robert Blobaum from West Virginia University , many more pogroms and assaults against Galician Jews were perpetrated by the Ukrainian side in rural areas and other towns. Between 22 and 26 March 1919, during massacres in Zhytomyr (Jitomir), between 500 and 700 Jews lost their lives at the hands of armed men from the Ukrainian republican army led by Symon Petliura . The chief organizer of
2376-480: 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')
2475-554: 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
2574-524: The interwar period , he was an exceptionally admired public figure in Poland and was regarded as a hero for his exemplary record as an army commander in the Polish Legions of World War I and the ensuing Polish–Soviet War in 1920 . He was appointed Commander-in-Chief and Inspector General of the Polish Armed Forces following Marshal Józef Piłsudski 's death in 1935. Rydz served in this capacity at
2673-431: 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
2772-629: 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
2871-580: 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
2970-681: The Central Front of the Polish forces during the Battle of Warsaw of 1920 , also known as the "Miracle on the Vistula". In this decisive battle, Śmigły-Rydz's Central Front held firm against the Soviet attack and later blocked the escape routes for the defeated Bolshevik 4th and 15th Armies , as well as the 3rd Cavalry Corps of Soviet General Gayk Bzhishkyan , which in the end retreated to East Prussia to be interned by
3069-634: The Commander-in-Chief and Inspector-General of the Armed Forces. This role was assumed by Władysław Sikorski , who was serving in the new Polish government-in-exile in France (and after 1940 in the United Kingdom). In the autumn of 1939, Polish journalist Melchior Wańkowicz met Beck, also in internment, and he managed to talk to him for a few hours. This is what Wańkowicz wrote about this meeting: "It
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3168-478: The Commander-in-Chief of Polish Armed Forces, Śmigły-Rydz took complete responsibility for Poland's military defeat in September 1939. Rydz had proven himself an extremely able commander on smaller fronts in earlier wars, but was not an experienced strategist in a great conflict. Indeed, in 1922, in an evaluation of Polish generals, Piłsudski had written about him: "in operational work he displays healthy common sense and
3267-546: The Germans and Soviets. In 2016 a large and detailed oil painting was discovered amongst the archives of The Sikorski Museum in London. It had been folded into four and hidden in a briefcase by an unknown person and smuggled to Britain to avoid being taken by the Nazi occupation forces. After quite a feat of restoration funded by Philip Bujak , a private member of The Polish Heritage Society,
3366-791: The Germans. At the conclusion of the Polish-Soviet war, Rydz was appointed Inspector General of the Polish Army in the Wilno district and later in Warsaw. In November 1924, he informally headed the so-called strike of the generals , in which a group of Polish Army commanders resigned to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the lack of reaction of the Ministry of Military Affairs to the statements of General Franciszek Latinik that were unfavorable to former legionnaires. In 1926, during Piłsudski's May Coup , Rydz took
3465-659: The Litvaks in disdain, derogatively referring to them as tseylem-kop ("cross heads"), or Jews assimilated to the point of being Christian. This coincides with the fact that Hasidism was most influential in Ukraine and southern Poland but was fiercely resisted in Lithuania (and even the form of Hasidism that took root there, namely Chabad , was more intellectually inclined than the other Hasidic groups). The two groups diverged in their Yiddish accents and even in their cuisine , separated by
3564-617: The Marshal's full name was placed over his grave by the people of Warsaw in 1994. Rydz was married to Marta Zaleska, née Thomas; they had no children. Edward Śmigły-Rydz's reputation after World War II was generally negative. In the Soviet Union , the Polish People's Republic , and other Eastern Bloc states, he was denounced for his participation in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, for
3663-576: The Marshal's side and sent troops from Wilno to reinforce anti-government troops in Warsaw. Piłsudski never forgot this fidelity, and in 1929, Rydz was appointed the Marshal's deputy on all matters concerning the East. On 13 May 1935, following Piłsudski's death, Rydz was nominated by the president and government of Poland to serve in the capacity of the Inspector-General of the Polish Armed Forces ,
3762-562: The Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,364 Jews living in the country; but, by late 1938 that number had grown by over 16% to approximately 3,310,000. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic had grown by over 464,000. In September 1939, most of Galicia passed to Soviet Ukraine . The majority of Galician Jews were murdered during
3861-521: The Polish prime minister. On 10 November, he was promoted to the rank of Marshal of Poland. Rydz's image as Piłsudski's anointed successor was popularized by the Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego ("Camp of National Unity"), or "Ozon", movement, but it alienated many of Piłsudski's supporters, who were offended by what they saw as Rydz's acts of self-promotion. The period of Rydz's rule, 1935–39, has often been referred to as "a dictatorship without
3960-548: 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
4059-598: The Rydz-Mościcki pact. The regime became increasingly authoritarian , as manifested by the creation of the Ozon movement. However, Ozon never achieved its goal of developing popular mass appeal and transforming Rydz into "Poland's second great leader" (after Piłsudski himself). Several of Poland's most prominent politicians, including Mościcki and Foreign Minister Józef Beck , made a point of distancing themselves from this movement. In March 1939, Hitler split Czechoslovakia into
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4158-477: The USSR was impossible, Śmigły-Rydz issued orders to his forces to begin a retreat towards Romania and to not waste men on fighting the Soviet aggressors. On 18 September 1939, after avoiding capture by Soviet and then German troops, Śmigły-Rydz escaped to Romania and was interned. The crossing of the Polish government into Romania prevented Poland from having to officially surrender and allowed Polish soldiers to continue
4257-409: The Western Powers to obtain Polish permission for the Red Army to march westward, stating that "there is no guarantee that the Soviets will really take active part in the war; furthermore, once having entered Polish territory, they will never leave it." On 1 September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland , and Śmigły-Rydz was named Commander-in-Chief of all Polish forces. On 7 September, along with most of
4356-531: 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, 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
4455-422: 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 ,
4554-469: The army of General Edward Rydz-Śmigły . Although the Polish losses were estimated at more than 10,000 dead and wounded, the Western Ukrainian army lost in excess of 15,000 men. "Despite the official neutrality, some Jewish men had been noticed aiding the combat Ukrainian units, and this fact alone caused a great enthusiasm in the Ukrainian press." Reportedly, the Council of Ministers of the West Ukrainian People's Republic provided assistance to Jewish victims of
4653-427: The bulk of the Polish forces were to defend the Romanian bridgehead and await the counterattack promised by Poland's allies – the French and British. Unknown to Śmigły-Rydz, the Western Allies had no such plan and expected Poland to fall (see Western betrayal ). This strategy was further crippled when Soviet forces invaded Poland from the east on 17 September. Realizing that mounting a defence against both Germany and
4752-452: The condition of the army was catastrophic: "The cost of the construction of modest fortifications along our western border was equivalent to an 18-month budget of Poland, and at the same time, we were working on fortifications in the East. A modest armament plan was up to 5 billion zlotys . What was I supposed to do? I am not an economist, minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski told me that we only had 180 million (...) We began partial mobilization in
4851-487: 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
4950-409: The end of World War I, Galicia became a battleground of the Polish-Ukrainian War , which erupted in November 1918. During the conflict, 1,200 Jews joined the Ukrainian Galician Army and formed an all-Jewish Ukrainian battalion called Zhydivs’kyy Kurin (UHA). In exchange, they were allotted 10% of the seats in the parliament of the West Ukrainian People's Republic which emerged in the same month and
5049-480: 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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#17328589697965148-445: 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"
5247-399: The family of a Dr. Uranowicz, the town physician at Brzeżany. After graduating with distinction from the local gymnasium (secondary school), Rydz went to Kraków , where he completed studies in philosophy and history of art at the Jagiellonian University . He then studied to be a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and later in Vienna and Munich . In 1910–1911 he attended
5346-533: The fight against Nazi Germany, though Rydz's flight sparked some controversy because of his position as supreme commander of the Polish armed forces. Large numbers of Polish soldiers and airmen managed to escape into southern Europe through Hungary and Romania and later regrouped in France. After the French surrender, they re-assembled once more, but this time in the UK. John Gunther wrote after Śmigły-Rydz and Beck were interned in Romania that "They ought, one might say, to have been interned somewhere else before". As
5445-406: The fully restored painting was presented back to the Sikorski Institute where it is currently on display. Polish Decorations Foreign decorations Honorary Titles Rydz was Honorary Doctor of the Universities of Warsaw and (then-Polish) Vilnius and the Warsaw University of Technology , as well as an Honorary Citizen of several Polish cities. Tributes Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz Park
5544-471: The government, he evacuated Warsaw as it came under attack. Soon afterwards, Polish coordination began to suffer from issues with their communication equipment, which impaired Rydz's ability to command his forces effectively. In Brest (Brześć) on 11 September, he ordered the Polish capital to be defended at all costs. In his plan, Warsaw and the nearby Modlin Fortress were to become two redoubt-citadels in central Poland to fight on for as long as possible while
5643-444: The highest Polish military office. This was done in accordance with Piłsudski's wishes. Piłsudski's death saw his followers (the Sanacja ), divide themselves into three main factions: those supporting President Ignacy Mościcki as Piłsudski's successor, those supporting Rydz, and those supporting Prime Minister Walery Sławek . Mościcki in the end would conclude a power-sharing agreement with Śmigły-Rydz, which saw Slawek marginalised as
5742-431: 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
5841-418: 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
5940-439: 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
6039-522: 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
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#17328589697966138-546: 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
6237-432: The local economy such as retail sales and trade. They were also successful in the government; emancipated in 1867, Galician Jews constituted 58 percent of Galicia's civil servants and judges by 1897. During the 19th century Galicia and its main city, Lviv ( Lemberg in Yiddish), became a center of Yiddish literature . Lviv was the home of the world's first Yiddish-language daily newspaper, the Lemberger Togblat. Towards
6336-457: 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,
6435-429: 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
6534-413: 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
6633-452: 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 the Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of
6732-413: The newly reborn Second Polish Republic were protected by a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by President Paderewski . In 1921, Poland's March Constitution gave the Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance and freedom of religious holidays. The number of Jews migrating to Poland from Ukraine and Soviet Russia grew rapidly. According to
6831-431: The occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and satellite state of Slovakia . This encircled Poland with an iron ring on all sides except the east. Rydz was the only member of government who saw the impending danger of a conflict with Germany. However, the time remaining was too short for the creation of a new army operational plan in the west. During negotiations in Moscow in August 1939, Rydz refused all attempts by
6930-459: The pogrom became minister of war soon thereafter. Simultaneous Ukrainian pogroms took place in Berdichev, Uma, and Cherniakhov among other places. The Polish–Soviet War ended with the Peace of Riga signed in March 1921. The borders between Poland and Soviet Russia remained in force until the invasion of Poland in September 1939, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued in Soviet Ukraine . The rights of minorities in
7029-430: The political repression of far-left elements under his military government of the late 1930s, and for his key role in the Polish defeat of 1939. In the West, due to the influence of anti-Piłsudski circles (with Władysław Sikorski as their foremost representative), he was seen as having fled the battlefield in 1939, and little recognition was given to the actual and impossible circumstances of Poland's invasion and defeat by
7128-659: 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
7227-672: The reserve officers' academy in Vienna and received military training at the renowned Austrian 4th Infantry Regiment, the " Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights ". Rydz finished his military education with distinction and was offered a commission in the Imperial Army, which he declined. In 1912 he became a founder of the Polish paramilitary group, the Riflemen's Association ( Związek Strzelecki ). Concurrently he completed his art studies, regarded
7326-522: The resistance movement as a common underground soldier, thus voluntarily suspending his rank as Marshal of Poland. He managed to contact Grot-Rowecki, but remained incognito. He died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 55, on 2 December 1941, only five weeks after his arrival in Warsaw. He was buried in Warsaw under his nom de guerre "Adam Zawisza". His tombstone at the Powązki Cemetery bore this assumed name until 1991. A new tombstone inscribed with
7425-415: 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
7524-509: The so-called Gefilte Fish Line . Galitzianers like things sweet, even to the extent of putting sugar in their fish. 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 ' ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided
7623-408: The spring 1939. The nation hated it, more than 1,000 Silesians deserted to Germany. We were unable to keep Poland mobilized for so long, we could not afford it (...) They say that I am a coward. I had three options: to surrender, to kill myself, and to be captured. It was impossible to fight, as I had only half a company of soldiers with me. To kill myself meant failure. To fly to Warsaw?" Śmigły-Rydz
7722-459: The start of World War II during the invasion of Poland . When war loomed, political differences fell away and defense became the national priority. Consequently, Rydz's stature eclipsed even that of the president. The shock of the Polish defeat made objective evaluations of his legacy during and after the war difficult; his reputation, very much tied to the critical early months of World War II, remains tendentious and controversial. Edward Rydz
7821-858: The time of the 1926 May Coup. Sikorski declared in a telegram to General Stefan Grot-Rowecki , leader of the Armia Krajowa (AK) underground resistance in Poland: "the Polish Government will regard a sojourn of the Marshal in Poland as a sabotage of its work in the country. The Marshal must as soon as possible move to some country of the British Empire ". However, Śmigły-Rydz left Hungary on 25 October 1941, and travelling through Slovakia reached Poland. On 30 October, in strict secrecy, he came back to Warsaw to participate in
7920-600: The total population; by 1857 the Jewish population had risen to 449,000, or 9.6% of the total population. In 1910, the 872,000 Jews living in Galicia comprised 10.9% of the total population, compared to approximately 45.4% Poles, 42.9% Ruthenian, and 0.8% Germans. Most of Galician Jewry lived poorly, largely working in small workshops and enterprises, and as craftsmen—including tailors, carpenters, hat makers, jewelers and opticians. Almost 80 percent of all tailors in Galicia were Jewish. The main occupation of Jews in towns and villages
8019-619: 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
8118-617: 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
8217-896: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. Edward Rydz-%C5%9Amig%C5%82y Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz [ˈɛdvard ˈrɨdz ˈɕmiɡwɨ] also called Edward Rydz-Śmigły , (11 March 1886 – 2 December 1941)
8316-608: 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
8415-461: 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
8514-513: 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
8613-492: Was a Polish politician, statesman, Marshal of Poland and Commander-in-Chief of Poland's armed forces, as well as a painter and poet. Born in 1886, he grew up in small beginnings and was raised by his maternal grandparents after he became an orphan at age 13. He graduated with distinctions from the local Gymnasium . He completed his studies in philosophy and history of art at the Jagiellonian University . During
8712-406: Was a Galician Jew whose family migrated to the U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century. Under Habsburg rule, Galicia's Jewish population increased sixfold, from 144,000 in 1776 to 872,000 in 1910, due to a high birth rate and a steady stream of refugees fleeing pogroms in the neighboring Russian Empire. The Jews constituted one third of the population of many cities and came to dominate parts of
8811-648: Was already a full colonel . He did not forget his art, however, and exhibited his work at a gallery in Kraków around that time. In 1917, after their refusal to swear an oath to the Austrian and German authorities, the Legions were disbanded, their soldiers interned and their leader Józef Piłsudski imprisoned in Magdeburg fortress. By Piłsudski's appointment, Rydz (who was released from prison on grounds of ill health) became commander of
8910-438: Was at this time that he began using the dual surname Śmigły-Rydz. On 11 November 1918 the government relinquished power to Piłsudski, who became Provisional Head of State. After some hesitation, Piłsudski (though displeased at Śmigły-Rydz having worked with the socialists) confirmed his rank of brigadier general in the Polish army. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–21, Rydz commanded Polish armies in several offensives against
9009-472: Was born in the city of Brzeżany (now Berezhany in western Ukraine ), Galicia , Austria-Hungary , to Polish parents. He was the son of a professional non-commissioned officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army , Tomasz Rydz, and his wife Maria Babiak. Rydz grew up in rather humble circumstances and was orphaned at the age of 13. He was then raised by his maternal grandparents and, after their deaths, by
9108-407: Was completely impossible to get to Rydz, as he was kept in wild mountains, in the summer villa of Patriarch Miron, closely guarded by a special unit of Romanian police. I managed to get to his villa after bribing a Romanian officer, with the help of Rydz's physician, Dr. Cianciara (...) The Marshal spoke with a charming smile, but there was no spark in this smile. He said that after Piłsudski's death,
9207-461: Was disbanded nine months later. The West Ukrainian government respected Jewish neutrality during the Polish-Ukrainian conflict by an order of Yevhen Petrushevych , which protected Jews from being mobilized against their will or forced to contribute to the Ukrainian military effort. Both Ukrainian and pro-Ukrainian Jewish armed units suffered significant losses as they retreated from Galicia before
9306-470: 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
9405-424: 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 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 ),
9504-704: Was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish . In the modern period, Jews were the third most numerous ethnic group in Big Galicia, after Poles and Ruthenians . At the time that Galicia was annexed by Austria (i.e. the Habsburg monarchy ), in 1772, there were approximately 150,000 to 200,000 Jews residing there, comprising 5–6.5% of
9603-498: 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
9702-762: Was trade: wholesale , stationery and retail. However, the Jewish inclination towards education was overcoming barriers. The number of Jewish intellectual workers proportionally was much higher than that of Ruthenian or Polish ones in Galicia. Of 1,700 physicians in Galicia, 1,150 were Jewish; 41 percent of workers in culture, theaters and cinema, over 65 percent of barbers, 43 percent of dentists, 45 percent of senior nurses in Galicia were Jewish, and 2,200 Jews were lawyers. For comparison, there were only 450 Ruthenian (Ukrainian) lawyers. Galician Jewry produced four Nobel prize winners: Isidor Isaac Rabi (physics), Roald Hoffman (chemistry), Georges Charpak (physics) and S.Y. Agnon (literature). Henry Roth , who wrote Call It Sleep ,
9801-460: Was transferred from the internment camp to the villa of a former Romanian prime minister in Dragoslavele , from where he escaped on 10 December 1940 and crossed illegally into Hungary. His flight to Hungary and rumours about his planned return to Poland were a source of considerable displeasure to his rival Sikorski, now Prime Minister. Sikorski had been in opposition to Śmigły-Rydz and Piłsudski from
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