Yiddish’s ‘revival’ points to its resilience as a portable homeland – and a global reach, from Russia to Mexico to the US

(The Conversation) — I grew up in Mexico City, and when people find out that one of my native languages is Yiddish, they think I am pulling their leg. Isn’t that a Jewish language? Mexico? Impossible. Maybe you should write a science fiction novel that imagines Yiddish on Mars.

Actually, there is one already. In the 1950s, Ukrainian Argentine writer Velvl Tshernovetski published “ Erev der Ferter Velt-Milkhome: Hines, di Kenign fun Mars ,” which translates as “On the Eve of the Fourth World War: Hines, the Queen of Mars.”

This isn’t surprising. American Jews often associate Yiddish with Eastern Europe, but it has long gone beyond those boundaries. From the beginning, some Jews imagined Yiddish as a Jewish lingua franca, a common language. Yet it is just in the past few decades in which that universal drive is finally being acknowledged .

Bridge between worlds A Germanic language written in Hebrew letters, Yiddish is known as the tongue of Ashkenazic Jews . For centuries, Jews in Central and Eastern Europe spoke it within their communities, from the Netherlands to Russia.

At the end of the 19th century, Yiddish was indeed a “bridge” language that different Jewish groups…