According to a World Jewish Congress study, there has been a sharp decline in the use of Jewish languages — principally Yiddish — in the Soviet Union to the point where only 14 percent of the country’s Jews now name a Jewish language as their mother tongue. The percentage of Jews giving the Jewish language as their mother tongue ranged from a low of nine percent in the Ukraine to a high of 41 percent in the tiny Baltic Republic of Lithuania among the 11 Republics for which data has been assembled. However, even the high figure for Lithuania represents a significant drop from the 62 percent reported some nine years earlier.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
