Where Did the East European Jews Come from? an Explosive Debate Erupts from Old Footnotes (Book Review)

Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman, with notes edited by Paul Glasser. 2 vols. 1,752 pp. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City, 2008. ISBN-13 978-0300108873. $300.00. "We the children of immigrants had lots of languages to speak and we spoke them with relish," Saul Bellow wrote in the New Yorker in 2005. Language was a weapon of sorts in Chicago's play yards, and the children eagerly armed themselves. "We were prepared, braced, to answer questions in half a dozen tongues. The older children had not yet forgotten their Russian, and everybody spoke Yiddish." For Bellow, though he penned his masterpieces in English, Yiddish meant an allegiance. It was vibrant, pungent, and alive. Now the immigrant communities of the Bronx and Chicago, where children used Yiddish to taunt outsiders, have disappeared. The shtetls of Ukraine and Lithuania, where it was the fabric of life, have faded away to dust.