Yiddish Language - Secularization

Secularization

The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch (from Moischele-Deutsch or "Moses German") - began to decline in the 18th century, as the Enlightenment and the Haskalah led to the view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. Owing to both assimilation to German and the incipient creation of Modern Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups" (Liptzin 1972). Farther east, the response to this force took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see Yiddish Renaissance).

The late 19th and early 20th centuries are widely considered the Golden Age of secular Yiddish literature. This coincides with the development of Modern Hebrew as a spoken and literary language, from which some words were also absorbed into Yiddish. The three authors generally regarded as the founders of the modern Yiddish literary genre were born in the 19th century, but their work and significance continued to grow into the 20th. The first was Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim. The second was Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער (tevye der milkhiker = Tevye the Dairyman) inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof. The third was Isaac Leib Peretz.