Yiddish Culture Society Asks Yiddish Be Taught in Schools of New York

If You Are Pleased with the “Jewish Daily Bulletin” Tell Your Friends to Subscribe.

The first annual convention of the “Yiddishe Kultur Gesellshaft,” the organization for promoting Yiddish culture in America, closed Sunday evening after adopting several important resolutions, among them one urging a campaign to advocate the study of Yiddish in American high schools and colleges and another protesting against alleged persecutions of the Yiddish language by Hebraists in Palestine.

At the Sunday morning session two papers were read in which the condition of Yiddish culture in this country and its possibilities were discussed. The first, by Dr. Jacob Shatzky, discussed the importance of Yiddish collections in American libraries. Dr. Shatzky declared that the largest and best collection of Yiddish books is in the library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, while many volumes that are of great historical interest for the development of the Yiddish language are in the Newberry collection in Chicago.

S. Niger, Yiddish literary critic, read a paper in which he discussed the possibility of starting a movement, in cooperation with the other national minority groups of the United States, for the teaching of Yiddish in American high schools and colleges. There is a large number of school children in this country with Yiddish traditions, Mr. Niger said, and Jewish children should have an opportunity in the public schools to develop those traditions by a study of the historical growth of their culture.

Among other resolutions which the conference adopted were: To congratulate the Jewish masses of Soviet Russia and other countries upon their achievements in the field of Yiddish culture; to initiate plans for a world union of Yiddish cultural organizations; to condemn the attacks upon the Yiddish Socialist schools in Poland; to support the work of the Yiddish Scientific Institute of Vilna by an annual subsidy; to issue an official organ of the Yiddishe Kultur Gesellshaft; and to thank the Yiddish press for aiding the society in its work.

An executive board of 40 members, 25 of them from New York City, was elected. Among those who addressed the convention at its close was Peretz Hirschbein, noted Yiddish playwright, who stated that real Jewish culture was being created only where Jewish agricultural colonies are being established. “It can hardly be said that New York is in America,” said Hirschbein, “it would be more true to say that it is at the rim of it. It often seems to me that if you could give New York one big push it would roll all the way across the ocean over into Europe.” Hirschbein, who is a globe-trotter, urged the devotees of Yiddish culture to pay more attention to the rest of the country. David Pinski, another Yiddish playwright, was chairman of the closing session of the convention.

If You Are Pleased with the “Jewish Daily Bulletin” Tell Your Friends to Subscribe.