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The Popularity of
Translated Yiddish
Literature
By PHILIP RUBIN
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(A Seven Arts Feature)
During the past quarter-century
Yiddish, as a spoken language of
daily intercourse and as a litera
ture, has suffered terrible blows.
The major blow was, of course,
the destruction of six million Eur
opean Jews, most of whom were
Yiddish-speaking and Yiddish-
reading. The other was the volun
tary linguistic assimilation of Jews
in the United States and other
free democracies, countries where
a generation earlier a large immi
grant generation had in its vast
majority lived out its life in Yid
dish. The third blow was the
forced linguistic assimilation of
three million Jews in Communist
Russia, the destruction of Yiddish
secular culture there by Stalin
after World War II.
While the decline of Yiddish as
a main, or at least auxiliary,
spoken language is not so notice
able if one happens to live in such
big centers of Jewish population
as New York, Buenos Aires, Tel
Aviv and even some Russian
cities, the decline in the number
of Yiddish readers has been vir
tually catastrophic, and there are
statistics to show it. Communist
Russia under Stalin could shut
down Yiddish newspapers and
theatres and stop the publication
of Yiddish books, but it couldn’t
prevent Jews there from speaking
Yiddish to each other. While per
haps one million out of the five-
and-a-half million American Jews
may still speak Yiddish, even if
they mix English words with it,
most of these Yiddish speakers do
not read a Yiddish newsaper or
book. In New York City they
prefer a rag like the “Daily News,”
even though their English is mea
ger, to an intelligent Yiddish news
paper like the “Forverts” or “Tog-
Morgen Journal." Only these two
Yiddish dailies are now left on
the North American continent,
whereas four decades ago there
were ten. The sale of Yiddish
books, even by famous authors,
has become so ridiculously—and
also tragically—small that a noted
author like Sholom Asch, who
died nine years ago, in his later
years virtually wrote his best-sel
ler novels for the English-reading
'-market and didn’t even care
whether they were published in
the original Yiddish. Isaac Bash-
evis Singer, who has succeeded
Asch as the sole living Yiddish
star on the present-day American
literary firmament, seems to be
heading in the same direction.
But while the number of readers
of Yiddish books has declined al
most to the vanishing point, a re
markable thing has been happen
ing to Yiddish literature during the
past quarter-century — its greatly
increased popularity in translation,
particularly in English translation,
since more than half of world
Jewry now lives in the United
States and other English-speaking
countries. I have mentioned the
present vogue of Singer and the
popularity of Asch in the immed
iate past. But that isn’t all there is
to *t—far from it. The popularity
of Sholom Aleiehem in English
translation has steadily risen in
the United States since World War
II and reached its climax with the
smash-hit performance of “Fiddler
On the Roof’’ which has been rim
ing for the past couple of years
on Broadway and is based on
Sholom Aleichem’s tales of "Tevye
the Dairyman.” Sholom Aleichem’s
humorous works are still selling
well in English translation, even
though they haven't become best
sellers.
The two Sholoms — Aleiehem
and Asch—together with Bashevis
Singer are the Yiddish authors
most widely known to our English-
reading public. But other celebrat-
brated Yiddish writers, like Peretz;
Mendele, I. J. Singer (older bro
ther of Bashevis and author of
" The Brothers Ashkenazi"), have
in recent years had new editions
of their works published in Eng-
The Southern Israelite
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