April 13-14 2008
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada,

A conference in honour of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter and Dr. Solomon Birnbaum

The Jewish National House, Czernowitz

Czernowitz at 100: The First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective marks the one hundredth anniversary of the first international conference on the Yiddish language. The 2008 conference, to be held on York’s campus, will both take stock of the 1908 conference and consider its host city, the multiethnic capital of the Habsburg province of Bukovina (now in Ukraine).

Questions of language and identity remain as divisive in the contemporary “global village” as a century ago and, despite predictions, nationalism has failed to disappear as a major factor in world politics since World War II. Yiddishism, the movement to transform Yiddish from a folk language and culture into the focal point of modern Jewish identity and of a European Kultur, represents a fascinating example of language-based nationalism in the early twentieth century.

Jews traditionally formed a territorially dispersed, internally bilingual (Hebrew-Yiddish) minority that balanced expectations of messianic restoration to their ancient homeland in Palestine with a sense of indigenousness in their contemporary homelands. Prior to World War II, they were frequently perceived (and not merely by antisemites) as a distinct, non-European racial group dwelling on the periphery of non-Jewish life. Their modernization and path toward emancipation and integration into the dominant society evoked crises surrounding loss of identity and cultural integrity for both Jews and non-Jews. The rival ideologies of Hebraism and Yiddishism emerged as part of a complex of political and cultural responses to the decline of religion-centered identity and the challenge of Jewish integration in Eastern Europe. Ironically, both sought to achieve a monolingual revolution in Jewish society, mimicking patterns in general European society but in a specifically Jewish key. They faced vehement opposition from both outside and inside Jewish society, most importantly from anti-nationalist Orthodox leaders and from champions of the Jews’ assimilation into non-Jewish society.

The 1908 Czernowitz conference aimed to raise the prestige of Yiddish, often derided as a mongrel jargon, and address its political and legal status in Eastern Europe polities. Its agenda outlined a number of issues relevant to the further development of Yiddish language, literature, and culture, which had begun in the second half of the nineteenth century a process of modernization akin to that of other European vernaculars. However, the bulk of the conference agenda was never addressed due to preoccupation with the central question of the status of Yiddish relative to Hebrew. Was Yiddish to rise to the level of Hebrew, a prestigious liturgical and literary language whose revival as a spoken language had only recently begun, and be accorded a position as a national language of the Jewish people? Or had it already surpassed Hebrew in terms of currency and thus deserved the title of the national language of the Jewish people? Blustery sessions ensued in which debate rose to feverish levels. In retrospect, the Czernowitz Conference has been alternately seen as the pinnacle of Yiddish language nationalism and as a false start to an ill-fated movement. Regardless of the evaluation, it represents a watershed moment: not only did it publicly proclaim a movement to transform the religion-centric Jewish people into a Yiddish nation; the promotion of “upstart” Yiddish put champions of Hebrew on the defensive, resulting in an infamous “language war” that divided Jewish society for decades.

This conference looks back over the long divide of a century – one marked with the mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews to the Americas and Israel, two world wars, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust - to assess the fate of the conference participants and the successes and failures of Yiddish-based language nationalism itself as a phenomenon. In his now famous Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson observes the role of print capitalism and other vehicles of modern mass culture in forging disparate groups into nations with an articulated sense of commonality. In the case of the Jews, a concept of peoplehood had long existed but modern nationalism demanded that its basis be redefined. This conference seeks to understand this process, especially the role of visionary individuals and modern cultural institutions, such as the daily press, language academies and cultural conferences, in reconceptualizing and reconfiguring Jewish identity.

One hundred years ago the nation-state was central to identity and a movement had only recently begun to resuscitate the Hebrew language as a spoken language and build a sovereign Jewish state. How was Yiddishism poised to achieve its aims in a world that knew no concrete “Yiddishland”? How has it received representation in literature and art? How did the model of the state serve as an organizing principle for such a quintessential Diaspora language and paradigmatic “stateless” culture as Yiddish? How did dynamic interaction with Zionism and other nationalist movements in the region shape the cultural ideology of Yiddishism and the political ideology of Diaspora Nationalism (the movement for the recognition of Jews as a national minority within states)? What lessons can be learned from campaigns for national minority rights in the multiethnic empires of Eastern Europe and their post-WWI successor states for the construction of both multinational states and nation-states with national minorities today?

The 2008 conference will also examine fin de siècle Czernowitz as a cultural, political, and linguistic milieu for Jews and their interactions with members of other national communities. Bukovina, home to a German-speaking Jewish bourgeoisie in Czernowitz and Yiddish-speaking Jews in its environs, was also home to a number of other ethnic communities, including Rumanians, Ukrainians, and Germans, all with national aspirations. In what ways did the cultural and political endeavors of these groups influence, complement, and conflict with one another? How has Czernowitz as a cultural milieu - an Austrian Kronstadt at the historic crossroads of Germanic, Romance, Slavonic, Jewish, and Ottoman cultures - shaped the creative personalities and figured in the works of artists and activists, such Paul Celan and Aharon Appelfeld, who claimed the city as their birthplace or adopted home? What can we learn from Czernowitz to promote the harmonious coexistence of ethno-cultural groups in multiethnic cities and states?

Issues of language and identity in multiethnic contexts remain as relevant today as they were a century ago. This is perhaps no more evident than in Canada, a country possessing two official languages in addition to a remarkable array of tongues used by indigenous and immigrant peoples. Czernowitz at 100 offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration among international scholars specializing in such diverse fields as History, Literature, Sociology, and Linguistics.

The conference will be held in memoriam to the recently deceased Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, a Czernowitz native and professor of Yiddish who served as instructor to thousands of students worldwide, including many Torontonians and other Canadians. It will also honour the memory of Dr. Solomon Birnbaum, son of the 1908 conference’s convener Nathan Birnbaum and a leading Yiddish linguist and founder of the field of Hebrew paleography. After spending his adolescence in Czernowitz, Solomon Birnbaum earned a doctorate and taught Yiddish at the University of Hamburg. After the Nazi rise to power, he settled in England, where he taught in London. He relocated to Toronto in the 1970s, where his family and archives remain to this day.