ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Before World War II, some 11 million people spoke Yiddish, the historic language of Ashkenazi Jews. The language nearly disappeared because of the Holocaust and assimilation, but experts are kvelling, as they say the language is showing some chutzpah and making a comeback. Robin Estrin from member station KCRW tells us why.
ZACH GOLDEN: (Reading, speaking Yiddish).
ROBIN ESTRIN, BYLINE: At a Jewish cultural center on the 14th floor of an old bank building in downtown Los Angeles, Rabbi Zach Golden is reading a poem called "California." Golden translates from Yiddish.
GOLDEN: I drift, drift into sleep, becoming a desert dream.
ESTRIN: This space, a hybrid synagogue and Jewish bookstore, is called Der Nister.
GOLDEN: Der Nister means the hidden in Yiddish.
ESTRIN: Golden cofounded it in 2020 as a center for Yiddish language and cultural events in Los Angeles. He says their events are drawing bigger crowds.
GOLDEN: This may have been the first time this amount of young people have showed up to such a thing in, like, 10, 15 years.
ESTRIN: This interest in Yiddish boomed nationwide during the pandemic, says Sarah Bunin Benor. She's the director of the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College.
SARAH BUNIN BENOR: There was a very strong spike in interest in Yiddish, in learning Yiddish online, in participating in Yiddish activities and Yiddish conversation groups and Duolingo and Yiddish Wordle.
ESTRIN: Duolingo, the language learning platform, said by email that more than 360,000 people around the world are studying Yiddish on the app today. About half are under 30 years old. What's happening is radical because a majority of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers.
AARON PALEY: Yiddish then becomes associated with death.
ESTRIN: Aaron Paley is the founder of an LA-based organization for preserving Yiddish culture called Yiddishkayt.
PALEY: So it becomes, just by default, almost a negative thing to talk about Yiddish and to speak Yiddish. And it's not something then that the Jews are proud of.
ESTRIN: Yiddish experts say most Jews in America assimilated and learned English, though for some ultra-Orthodox Jews it remains the language of daily life. Meanwhile, Israel adopted Hebrew, not Yiddish, as an official language. All of that contributed to its decline. Years ago, when Zach Golden wanted to learn the language of his ancestors, he says he was discouraged.
GOLDEN: I distinctly remember saying I was going to go learn Yiddish in the middle of rabbinical school and being told it was a waste of time.
ESTRIN: Now, those who promote and study Yiddish say people are coming back to the language for different reasons. Some Jews are hungry to connect with their heritage. Golden wanted to speak to his bubbe and reclaim the culture the Nazis tried to scrub away.
GOLDEN: By knowing ourselves, our history, our language, our culture, that's - knowledge is power.
ESTRIN: Others who are critical of Israel want to explore Jewish identity outside of Zionism. That's the case for Iris Malka Morrell, who organized the poetry reading back in downtown LA.
IRIS MALKA MORRELL: Growing up in the U.S., like, we're really raised to believe that if you're Jewish, like, the place you go is Israel, and the culture you go to is there now. And Yiddish really is, like, a different alternative to that.
ESTRIN: Zionist or anti-Zionist, Golden doesn't really care why everyone's here. He's just glad to see so many people excited about Yiddish. For NPR News, I'm Robin Estrin in Los Angeles.
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