Yiddish, once the lingua franca of Ashkenazic Jews, can again be heard on the streets of Europe. "I was here 3 years ago with World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, and we understood that we need to do something for this community," WJC CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singer said in an address at the WJC's International Yiddish Culture Center in Vilnius, at an event marking the European Day of Jewish Culture.
"Together with [World Jewish Congress Chief Program Officer] Sonia Gomes de Mesquita and [UNESCO Director-General] Irina Bokova, we came up with the understanding that Yiddish is almost an extinct language. It's a culture, poetry, literature, all disappeared during the Second World War. If 6 million hadn't perished, you would had millions of people today who would have spoken Yiddish. We agreed to form a Yiddish center here in Vilnius.”
Before the Second World War there were between 70-80,000 Jews in the city while there are only a few thousand left in the entirety of contemporary Lithuania. The city was known for generations as the Jerusalem of Lithuania due to its role as a center of Jewish cultural life.
"Together with [Yiddish Center head] Yitzhack Averbuch, we created this center,” Singer explained, describing how 6500 people have taken courses in the Center over the past two years. The center was made possible thanks to WJC President Lauder and an anonymous major donor from South Africa, whose mother was originally from Lithuania.
That’s "double the amount of the Lithuanian Jewish community,” Singer continued. "The teaching is worldwide. Yiddish in Vilnius is back on the map. And despite everything that happened here, the community is thriving and we hope it will continue this way.”
Describing Yiddish in lyrical terms in an op-ed in the Times of Israel last year, Singer evoked a bygone era of Jewish life when he wrote that "Yiddish is not just a language. It is the dissonant pre-jazz tempo of the flute and the snare drum, the fatty schmaltz sizzling in the delicatessen frying pan, the fantastical realities brought to life by the writers Sholem Aleichem and Yitzhak Leib Peretz. It is the legacy of the Ashkenazi Jewish culture that thrived in Eastern Europe for nearly a millennia.”
The center, he wrote, "has provided seminars to...people of all ages, teaching them not just Yiddish words, but also about the vibrant folklore, literature, music, theater, film and media produced in the pre-war heyday of Yiddish culture.”
Aside from teaching Yiddish and hosting international scholars researching and teaching Yiddish culture, the Center also serves individuals who are interested in researching their family histories and see Yiddish and other Jewish studies as an important link to their personal Jewish roots and hosts public seminars for those Jews and non-Jews, who are interested to get acquainted with the rich Yiddish culture and heritage.
On Monday, the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, which operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress, will be hosting Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius in Jerusalem. Both the Lithuanian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have previously attended ICFR events.
