Yiddish as an official minority language? A government agency that promotes Yiddish? Translations into that language of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings' – and all this in Sweden?? Vos? Yo, yo!
Published in "Haaretz": https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2024-02-23/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/why-a-yiddish-renaissance-is-underway-in-sweden-of-all-places/0000018d-d36b-d5f7-a3ff-d3ffea4f0000
STOCKHOLM – It was less than two weeks after October 7. The Stockholm Jazz Festival was taking place as scheduled, but for some of the visitors nothing was "as scheduled." The performance by renowned Israeli bassist Avishai Cohen, touted as one of the festival's highlights, was canceled because of the war, and for many Jews in Sweden and for the Israelis who live there as well, that was a portent of a very fraught period.
But the evening of October 18 was different. In Faschig, one of the most important jazz venues in Sweden, 13 musicians performed before a full house. Musically, the Georg Riedels Yiddishland performance, it was spectacular. The pieces sounded like a mash-up of Frank Zappa and Swedish folk tunes, combined with American jazz and zemirot – traditional Jewish songs sung on Shabbat – from some East European shtetl. The traditional songs in particular constituted a very unusual occurrence for a Nordic jazz festival. All the lyrics in the songs performed that evening were in Yiddish.
The music was composed by Georg Riedel, one of the biggest names in Swedish jazz. But it turns out that when it comes to a fondness for Yiddish, Riedel is actually not alone. In recent years, the language has been flourishing in Sweden. One reasons for this is that Yiddish has a special status here: It is officially recognized as a non-territorial, minority language. As such, it joins the languages of other minorities in Sweden: Finnish, Sami, Romany (the language of the Roma) and Meänkieli (a Finnish language spoken in the Torne Valley of far-north Sweden). In practice, the government in Stockholm is obligated to promote and preserve Yiddish.
"Because Yiddish is an official language here, there's a government agency to promote Yiddish," says Sarah Schulman, a local writer and publisher of books in Yiddish. "Swedes have a right to study Yiddish at school as a mother tongue, even if it's not their mother tongue. Public radio has several Yiddish programs and there are television shows in Yiddish – all part of a quota that the public broadcasting service has to meet."
Schulman is a member of the Yiddish Society of Stockholm, which she describes as a "very active" community. Some 20,000 Jews live in her country, the vast majority of whom do not speak Yiddish. "For example, through Judisk Kultur I Sverige – the Jewish Culture in Sweden organization – we brought a Yiddish-language production of Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Sweden's most important theater. We just held a huge, two-day symposium about the Singer family [Isaac Bashevis, his brother Israel Joshua Singer and their sister Esther Kreitman, all accomplished Yiddish writers] with experts from all over the world. We have a Yiddish faculty at Lund University [in southern Sweden], and there are several Yiddish-related courses at [a college called] Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. There is an annual seminar of worldwide scope about Yiddish. There has been a Yiddish theater in Stockholm for 120 years, we have a Yiddish choir, and there are several publishing houses that put out Yiddish books. My publishing house is one of them, but there are also poetry publishers and more."
Schulman was also the driving force behind Riedel's recent jazz concert. Riedel, who celebrated his 90th birthday in January, was born to a Jewish mother and a Sudeten-German father, who had fled to Sweden from the former Czech Republic four years before that. During his long career – he is also an accomplished double bass player – he has composed music rife with multiple influences, but it was only in recent years that he was inspired by his Jewish roots and began composing music with Yiddish lyrics, and approached Schulman.
"I love Yiddish songs and I have always sung traditional songs, but for my children I wanted newer songs," says Schulman, 40. "When Riedel contacted me and said he wanted to put Yiddish texts to music, I put him in touch with the Swedish Yiddish writer Salomon Schulman [no relation to Sarah] and together with me and with the poet Hanna Riedel, Georg's daughter, we wrote the new songs that were finally compiled into a beautiful book, two music albums and a theater show for children in Yiddish.
Sarah Schulman, photo: Hugh Gordon
"This is a fascinating project," she continues, "because it offers a bridge between Yiddish culture, Jewish culture and Swedish culture. Since every Swedish child knows Georg's music [not least because Riedel composed the songs for a series of films about the iconic children's book heroine Pippi Longstocking], we have also translated some of Georg's better-known Swedish songs into Yiddish. This is one of the most important projects we have ever done to revive the language and attract a new audience to the Yiddish world. For me it was like 'go big, or go home,' so I made sure the project reached the biggest stages. I wanted to show people – including also Jews in Sweden – that the Yiddish world has something unique and different to offer. This year a Georg Riedels Yiddishland album was also been nominated for one of the most prestigious music awards in Sweden."
Schulman grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family. "My Yiddish-speaking grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, came to Sweden from Poland with the White Boats [a humanitarian operation that transported thousands of survivors to Sweden from German concentration camps after World War II]. My father is the head of the Yiddish Society in Stockholm, so Yiddish is a large part of my Jewish identity. I grew up with Yiddish literature, with Isaac Bashevis Singer, I. L. Peretz and Itzik Manger. Yiddish stories were my favorites when I was young. I was surrounded by Yiddish music, idiomatic expressions and jokes."
She went on to study Yiddish at Columbia University in New York. "As a young woman in New York, I realized how important Yiddish was for me, so when I returned to Sweden I became very active in the local Yiddish community. In 2015 I wrote my first children's book in Yiddish. I was looking for books in Yiddish for my sister's children, and because I couldn't find any that were secular and modern, I wrote one myself. A few years later, in 2019, I founded my own publishing house, Dos Nisele (the Little Nut), because the comments I got from readers were so positive. They wanted more."
Does the Swedish audience accept Yiddish naturally? Is there no resistance to a relatively unknown language identified with the Jewish past in Europe?
"It's been a slow process, but Swedish society is gradually getting interested in what we're doing. Yiddishists tend to have pretty radical dreams, and in the last 20 years, and especially since the Georg Riedel project, we've been getting a lot of attention. We've been on radio and television and in the newspapers. The project is doing very well, probably because Riedel's music is part of the core of Swedish culture and we are taking this core and adding something to it, using Yiddish."
Nikolaj Olniansky also heads a Yiddish publishing house in the city of Lund, in southern Sweden, which is known worldwide. Its recent publications include Yiddish translations of some of the "Harry Potter" books and "The Lord of the Rings," typically purchased by secular Yiddish lovers and also as collectibles by non-speakers.
"We started Olniansky Tekst back in 2010," the publisher says. "My wife, Ida, and I had just taken Yiddish at Lund University and wanted an outlet to use the language afterward. Together with a friend from Yiddish studies, Linda Gordon, we decided to put out a magazine. While in university, we noticed that a lot of material published in Yiddish was also about Yiddish [itself]. We wanted to do something different: to write in Yiddish about things that interested us, like movies, video games, books, music, etc. Much of the content had absolutely nothing to do with Yiddish and/or Jewish culture. The result was a small periodical called Dos Bletele [the Small Page].' We did everything ourselves: articles, editing, graphics, distribution – the works. Although we had some subscribers, it was really a project designed for ourselves as a way to practice our language skills, and when we felt ready we decided to take the publishing house to the next level."
In time, Ida and Nikolaj continued on their own,and began to focus on children's literature in Yiddish. With a grant from the Swedish Arts Council, they published four books. "This was – and is – pure activism," he says. "The feeling that Yiddish was about to fade away was hard to bear, and we knew that a lot of families outside the Hasidic world felt the same way. So our mission became to help keep Yiddish alive in the secular world by creating modern, high-quality literature. So when Yiddishists became parents, there would be point-and-learn books for their children, when a Jewish teenager searched for their roots they would have juvenile fiction to enjoy, and when Yiddish writers created prose and poetry there would be a publishing house available for them. So far we have published about 30 books and 21 issues of an ambitious literary quarterly."
What books have you published lately, and how many copies have you sold?
"We've published classic Yiddish writers like Bashevis Singer and [the poet] Kadya Molodowsky, big international writers like J.K. Rowling, Erich Kästner and J.R.R. Tolkien; award-winning graphic novels, poetry and prose from the best contemporary writers, new children's books and more. A standard print run for us is 500 to 1,000 copies, but there are exceptions. 'Harry Potter' reaches a lot of target groups, because many see it as a collector's item, a cool book to have on the bookshelf, or a fun gift to give – we've printed 5,000 copies so far."
How do you explain the fact that a country with a population of 10 million and a small Jewish community has become a Yiddish superpower?
Yiddish has been a part of the Swedish-Jewish cultural scene for a long time. However, as in the rest of the world, Yiddish basically skipped a generation and became a language of the past and a reminder of terrible pain and suffering.Nikolaj Olniansky
"First of all, one has to remember that although the Jewish community in Sweden is small in numbers, there have been several immigration waves that have kept Yiddish alive within the community – from the Jews who came from czarist Russia to those who came from Poland in the 1960s. Yiddish has been a part of the Swedish-Jewish cultural scene for a long time. However, as in the rest of the world, Yiddish basically skipped a generation and became a language of the past and a reminder of terrible pain and suffering, whereas Hebrew became the language of a new dawn, of victory and prosperity.
"The fact that Yiddish became an official minority language in Sweden in 2000 is what brought about the current situation," he observes, "but that would not have happened if Yiddish hadn't been a central part of many Swedish Jews' lives. It was also partly a matter of timing. Sweden's governments were then investing in minority languages just as some people who thought it was important were putting their heart and soul into creating a new wave of Yiddish literature.
"And it's not just in Sweden. Take [American-born translators including] Arun Viswanath, for example, who wanted his kids to be able to read Harry Potter in Yiddish and set out to translate the book without knowing whether it would ever see the light of day; or [former computer programmer-turned-translator] Barry Goldstein, who wanted something to do after retiring and decided that translating Tolkien's works into Yiddish was a good project; or Israeli writers Michael (Mikhel) Felsenbaum, Velvl Chernin and Emil Kalin, who also write in Yiddish. I'm very happy to be a small part of this group of people who live and breathe Yiddish and carry the language into the 21st century."
Schulman, too, sees Swedish history as a central factor behind the present revival of Yiddish in the country. "Because Sweden was not involved in World War II, it became the only country in Europe [besides Albania] that had more Jews after the Holocaust than before. After the war, Sweden was also one of the wealthiest countries in Europe because it had stayed out of the war. The Jews who came here brought [with them] the stars of the Yiddish theater, the Yiddish music scene and Yiddish films. All the great names performed here; we had more Yiddish culture here than existed almost anywhere else."
How important is Yiddish to the local Jewish community?
"Most Swedish Jews come from Yiddish-speaking families. The events organized by the Yiddish Society of Stockholm always attract a full house and there's obviously much interest in the language. So, we bring value to the Jewish community and add to Jewish life in Sweden. Aaron Isaac, the first Jew to come to Sweden, 250 years ago, spoke Yiddish, and I think that even today it's the right of every Jewish child in Sweden to have access to the Yiddish culture and language. More and more Jewish families today ask for Yiddish teachers, and we don't have enough."
But for Schulman, the language's importance is not just historical. "There's something in the Yiddish world that doesn't only give me meaning and purpose," she says. "It's also something I want to create for my children. Yiddish is driven by tolerance, curiosity and courage. It's a platter of ideas, and these values are embedded in the Yiddish world – it's an alternative to a world that's gotten increasingly polarized."
Isn't there tension between Yiddish and Hebrew? Is it convenient for the Swedes to support Yiddish because it helps distinguish the Jews of Sweden from the State of Israel, where Hebrew is spoken?
"It doesn't come from the need to protect the Jewish minority – that's something else – but from the need to protect Yiddish as an endangered language. Hebrew is a different story altogether … it doesn't qualify as an official minority language.
"Jews have always been multilingual, and there's no reason to choose one Jewish language over another. We don't think about what some perceive as tension between Yiddish and Hebrew. If we can create quality Yiddish culture for Jews and non-Jews in Sweden as well as for Yiddishists around the world, we're happy to do it. We've received recognition in Sweden, and we are really going to use the opportunities we get. I want my children and the generations to come to have access to the beautiful Yiddish culture that I knew as a child, and which has brought me so much joy and happiness."
דיויד סטברו 