The New York Yiddish daily, “Jewish Morning Journal”, started yesterday a practical course in Yiddish for English-speaking Jews conducted by Mr. Alexander Harkavy, the author of the standard Yiddish and Hebrew dictionaries, including Yiddish-English, Yiddish-Russian, Hebrew-English, Neo-Hebrew, etc., as well as “The Yiddish Language”, “Comparative Philology”, and other works.
The “Jewish Morning Journal” has undertaken this step as part of a campaign to spread the knowledge of Yiddish among the Jewish youth of the United States. Convinced that a knowledge of Yiddish by the future generation is essential in order to preserve the old and cherished Jewish traditions among them, as well as to strengthen the bonds between the old and the new Jewish generations, the “Jewish Morning Journal” states, it has decided to carry out the campaign for Yiddish from the narrow confines of the several Yiddish schools, directly into the homes of the large Jewish-reading public reached by the “Jewish Morning Journal”.
In the preface to this course, which will run serially in the “Jewish Morning Journal”, Mr. Harkavy says: Yiddish is the language of three-fourths of our people and to know it means to be able to have intercourse with the majority of our race. It is to us a universal language, as Jews are scattered over the entire world. Let an American Jew travel through Poland, Russia, Germany, the Baltic countries, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, the Balkan countries, even through China and Japan, and he will with a knowledge of Yiddish, easily find himself at home.
Nor is that the only advantage. There is in this language an important literature which in the course of these 30-40 years has made gigantic strides and now holds a respectable place among the literatures of the world. The Yiddish literatureshas much to offer that is instructive, enlightening and entertaining. That literature will open up its treasures to those who will have a knowledge of its language.
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.
