J. D. B. News Letter

though from the very outset a stream of secular interests is also observable. When, in the 19th century, a secular movement, the so-called enlightenment, set in, Yiddish was made the instrument of this movement, just as it previously had served religious purposes. Nowadays, while still being imprinted by the patterns by which the Jewish cultural group brought it to life, Yiddish is not only satisfying the needs of religious people in things connected with their routine, but is serving social purposes ranging all the way from talmudic studies to a wide secular school-system comprising kindergartens as well as colleges. Even anti-religious propaganda is being carried on in this language so thoroughly permeated during centuries with religious influences. Every pig in the Jewish agricultural colonies of the Soviet Union is affectionately welcomed by the same word, the very sound of which is a horror to the orthodox Jew.

“The study of Yiddish, if adequately conducted, can be of great interest to the general linguist for several reasons: as a language showing so peculiar an amalgamation of so divergent formative elements; as a language giving an unusual opportunity of studying the impact of religion upon language and subsequent phenomena of secularization; and as an instance of how a highly unified literary super-dialectical language is being formed almost before our eyes in spite of the great territorial extension. Moreover the student has the advantage of having the whole history of the language, almost from the very beginning, stored up in literary documents, so that the study of the present-day language may go hand in hand with the observation of the development in the past”.