Betraying a precious inheritance

Years ago I started to relearn the Yiddish that I had forgotten from my childhood. I joined a class at LJCC and when that closed I invited the talented and charismatic teacher, well-known in Yiddish circles, Barry Davis, to teach an informal class in my office.

Why do they teach French but not Yiddish?

When JW3 opened in 2013 I wrote to the management and offered to transfer my group to their building and their authority. After all, I reasoned, everyone should have access to this rich and important language, not just the small group who happen to know about my private class.

No answer. I gave them more time to settle in. I wrote again. Still no answer. I eventually I got an answer. ''No room for a Yiddish class in the building and probably no demand''.

At one point, two members of the management team came to visit the class I organise. I don't know why, because they know Barry. He's been teaching Yiddish and talking on Yiddish subjects for many years. Anyway, they were welcome. They said they liked the class but there was still no room. Well, I've written and asked too many times now, and I no longer think it's just a strange thing. In fact, I think it's a disgrace that a Jewish cultural institute does not offer a Yiddish class. Yiddish is an intrinsic element of Jewish history and culture.

It has a rich literature - Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer are but two of the many who wrote in Yiddish. Yes, you can read them and some of the others in translation, but it ain't the same. People learn Russian to read Tolstoy! And Yiddish is an integral part of all our Ashkenazi past… lose it and a vital link has gone.

In JW3's mission statement they say ''we will achieve our mission (to be at the heart of a vibrant, diverse unified community… engaged with Jewish arts, culture, learning and life)… by creating outstanding… classes and courses whose diversity reflects the diversity of our community''. Well, I'm still waiting to have my not-insignificant part of that diversity represented. Yiddish is not an obscure, arcane or dead language. There is great interest in it in universities across northern Europe where it has been recognised as a significant part of European culture. Belatedly, perhaps, there is growing interest in Yiddish in Israel, and it is still spoken by many as a vernacular language. I sometimes wonder why JW3 has not, since its inception two-and-a-half years ago, taken a more pro-active interest in Yiddish despite my offer of a ready-made class, with a teacher and students.

Could it be that some of that early Israeli disdain for the language of the shtetl and the ghetto, of the pogroms and the camps, in favour of Ivrit, the new, virile language of the newly created state of Israel, persists in the deep places of the minds of those who decide which languages to offer and which not?

But French and not Yiddish? It is beyond my understanding. There are dozens of places in north London to learn French, but very few to learn Yiddish, which is our precious and fragile inheritance. Yiddish is a language full of the life and experience, the triumphs and the suffering of our ancestors for more than a thousand years, and yet JW3 has no room for it. By studying Yiddish, we connect ourselves back, not just to our grandparents but to our deep Jewish roots. It is important for our sense of identity and pride in our heritage that we keep the language alive, in a secular environment.

So, come on JW3, no more prevaricating about not having rooms available, or worrying that there might not be enough people to make the course financially viable. Look at your own mission statement, and start offering Yiddish classes.

"Nu?"