(RNS) — As many local media outlets around the world are struggling, the Yiddish press is experiencing a rebirth, surprising many who not long ago pronounced the Jewish language as doomed after millions of its core speakers died in the Holocaust.
“Since 2000, over 30 Yiddish print media have been founded, almost exclusively in the Orthodox Jewish milieu of New York and the surrounding area,” said Bjorn Akstinat, a German media researcher who recently compiled a directory of Yiddish media outlets.
Sparked by technological advances as well as changing social attitudes, the boom has led to a parallel cultural renaissance among Haredi and Hasidic Jewish communities (sometimes called ultra-Orthodox), for whom Yiddish is the native tongue.
An outgrowth of old High German, heavily influenced by Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic languages, and traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet, Yiddish was the primary language of Ashkenazi Jews living in central and Eastern Europe for nearly 1,000 years. At the turn of the 20th century, more than 10 million people spoke Yiddish, encouraged by hundreds of newspapers on at least three continents, with a wide range of religious and political bents.
America’s once largest Yiddish-language newspaper, “Forverts” (The Forward), was founded in 1897 to bring immigrant Eastern European Jews the news of the w …