Misplaced Pages

#206793

74-571: The term entered the English language some time between 1890–95 from Yiddish חוצפּה (ḥuṣpâ). It was used in Mishnaic Hebrew , חוֹצְפָּה (ḥôṣǝpâ), from חָצַף (ḥāṣap, “to be insolent”), though it is believed to come initially from Aramaic , חֲצִיפָא (ḥăṣîpāʾ), חֲצַף (ḥaṣap, “to be barefaced, insolent”). In Hebrew, chutzpah is used indignantly , to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior. In traditional usage,

148-545: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,

222-519: A declaration that the so-called "decency clause" of 20 U.S.C. 954(d) was void for vagueness and violated the First Amendment on its face. The Supreme Court heard two motions. The first was the defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings. Defendants argued that: (1) the NEA's funding decisions are unreviewable because they are committed to agency discretion by law; (2) venue was improper as to

296-492: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in

370-512: A man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan". Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility , which renders others speechless and incredulous. The cognate of ḥuṣpāh in Classical Arabic , ḥaṣāfah ( حصافة ), does not mean "impudence" or "cheekiness" or anything similar, but rather "sound judgment". Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis distinguishes

444-469: A significant genre of religious, moral and spiritual audacity toward the divine authority—" chutzpah klapei shmaya "—finds a place of honor in Jewish religious thought. As an example, Schulweis cites a case where Moses argues with God about the justice of His commands: For Moses , that God should "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation" (Exod. 20:5)

518-644: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and

592-475: Is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using

666-493: Is also derived from this term, although its meaning is closer to 'insolence' or 'arrogance', and so it is typically used in a more negative sense instead of denoting a positive description of someone's audacity. Similarly, the German form of "chutzpah" is Chuzpe . In Czech, chucpe is commonly used with a sharply negative connotation. The Dutch noun gotspe is also related and refers to a brazen or shameless act or situation. In

740-487: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By

814-498: Is an unacceptable form of group punishment akin to the morally indiscriminate punishment of Sodom . Challenging God's pronouncement of the punishment of the sons for the sins of the fathers, Moses argues with God, against God, and in the name of God. Moses engages God with fierce moral logic: Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteousness of Abraham and the idol worship of his father Terach. Does it make moral sense to punish

SECTION 10

#1732797675207

888-431: Is not possible at all times for Congress to legislate with clarity and it is difficult to establish a precise criterion when granting subsidies. Justice O'Connor wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The meaning of the section 954(d) obligation to take into consideration decency and respect for diverse beliefs and values had been debated throughout

962-447: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and

1036-511: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in

1110-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups

1184-496: Is this finite, errant, fallible, human creature to question the explicit command of the author of the Ten Commandments? The divine response to Moses, according to the rabbinic moral imagination, is arresting: By your life Moses, you have instructed Me. Therefore I will nullify My words and confirm yours. Thus it is said, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for

1258-498: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,

1332-567: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in

1406-660: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. –  Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in

1480-600: The Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However,

1554-632: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in

SECTION 20

#1732797675207

1628-675: The Hindi language movie Haider (2014) by Vishal Bharadwaj, a modern-day interpretation of Hamlet set against the backdrop of Kashmir in the midst of political conflict, the protagonist uses the word, which he pronounce as /'tʃʊtspə/ instead of /ˈhʊtspə/ or /ˈxʊtspə/ to describe India's way of treating the people of Kashmir since the beginning of the conflict. Yiddish Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit.   ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit.   ' Judeo-German ' )

1702-586: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and

1776-536: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of

1850-484: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')

1924-524: The University of Pennsylvania used $ 30,000 of a visual arts grant from the NEA to fund a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe ’s work. The exhibit, titled "The Perfect Moment", included homoerotic photographs that some members of Congress deemed pornographic. Members of Congress also criticized Andres Serrano 's work Piss Christ , a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. The Southeast Center for Contemporary Arts, which also received funding from

1998-565: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on

2072-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish

2146-655: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that

2220-498: The Arts in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. As of 2012, the NEA had awarded more than $ 4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. Since its establishment, the NEA has funded thousands of individual artists and arts organizations. In 1989, two controversial works were partially or fully funded by NEA grants. The Institute of Contemporary Art at

2294-572: The Arts v. Finley National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley , 524 U.S. 569 (1998), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, as amended in 1990, ( 20 U.S.C.   § 954 (d)(1)), was facially valid, as it neither inherently interfered with First Amendment rights nor violated constitutional vagueness principles. The act in question required

Chutzpah - Misplaced Pages Continue

2368-592: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into

2442-563: The Court's interpretation of the statute. Scalia began his opinion, "'The operation was a success, but the patient died.' What such a procedure is to medicine, the Court's opinion in this case is to the law. It sustains the constitutionality of 20 U.S.C. 954(d)(1) by gutting it." From the conclusion that "consideration" is not equivalent to prohibition, the Court reasoned that the factors to be taken into consideration — "decency" and "respect" for diverse beliefs and values — are not intended to "disallow any particular viewpoints". The Court noted that

2516-590: The NEA, awarded Serrano a $ 15,000 grant. In response to the use of NEA grants to fund these projects, Congress created an Independent Commission of constitutional law scholars to review the NEA's grant-making process and make recommendations. Ultimately, Congress adopted the Williams/Coleman Amendment. The Amendment became §954(d)(1), which directs the NEA chairperson to judge the artistic merit of grant applications while also "tak[ing] into consideration general standards of decency and respect for

2590-488: The Privacy Act claim; and (3) plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the facial validity of the "decency clause" because they cannot establish the necessary injury. The Court also considered plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on their facial challenge to the "decency clause". The District Court found that the decency clause debased the First Amendment by deceitfully preventing some forms of protected speech and that

2664-555: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and

2738-436: The application of the decency clause will lead to the suppression of speech. But the Court found that the provision on its face is very clear that decency and respect are only considerations; it is not a provision that compels the chairperson to require decency and respect in every application. Because the subject matter is open to different interpretations, the Court determined that in the context of selected artistic subsidies it

2812-598: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,

2886-612: The chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to ensure that "artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which [grant] applications are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public". Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. Congress established the National Endowment for

2960-545: The chairperson to consider diversity in selecting the panels. The majority noted that it need not evaluate the NEA's interpretation because the statute was constitutional on its face even if construed more broadly. O'Connor wrote, "when Congress has in fact intended to affirmatively constrain the NEA’s grant-making authority, it has done so in no uncertain terms" — for example, the prohibition against awarding grants for obscene works. Neither Souter nor Justice Scalia necessarily rejected

3034-530: The child for the transgressions of the father? Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteous deeds of King Hezekiah , who sprang from the loins of his evil father King Achaz. Does Hezekiah deserve Achaz's punishment? Consider the nobility of King Josiah , whose father Amnon was wicked. Should Josiah inherit the punishment of Amnon? (Num. Rabbah, Hukkat XIX, 33) Trained to view God as an unyielding authoritarian proclaiming immutable commands, we might expect that Moses will be severely chastised for his defiance. Who

Chutzpah - Misplaced Pages Continue

3108-518: The clause was vague under the Fifth Amendment. The District Court rejected the NEA’s argument that "decency" and "respect" are implicit and voluntary standards in funding evaluations. Instead, the court ruled that the clause represents criteria to determine eligibility for NEA grants and that an overbroad statute would restrict protected and unprotected speech. The court held that while the government may constitutionally regulate "obscene" speech,

3182-551: The court found that, as with education funding, art funding enhances education neutrality. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed the district court’s finding and ruled in Finley’s favor. The Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeals decision. It found that decency does not certainly interfere with the First Amendment right to free expression and does not violate the Fifth Amendment's void for vagueness provision. The court found that 20 U.S.C. § 954(d)(1) merely adds factors to

3256-410: The decency clause might repress indecent speech, a form of expression immune from substantial governmental obstruction. The court also argued that in certain protected areas, such as public education funding, government grants "may not be used to suppress unpopular expression". Since both academic expression and artistic expression reach the core of a democratic society’s cultural and political vitality,

3330-708: The diverse beliefs and values of the American public". The case ultimately known as NEA v. Finley was filed by four individual performance artists— Karen Finley , John Fleck , Holly Hughes , and Tim Miller —and the National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO). The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants, the NEA and NEA Chairperson John E. Frohnmayer violated their constitutional rights by denying their applications for NEA grants. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief on their constitutional and statutory funding claims, and damages on an additional Privacy Act claim. In addition, plaintiffs sought

3404-556: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer

3478-532: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for

3552-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"

3626-544: The fathers." (Deut. 24:16) The word Chutzpah is sometimes used in discussions of Israeli politics. For example: "Will Far-right Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ’s Chutzpah Trigger a Third Intifada?" was the headline of an article in Haaretz , by Amos Harel , their military and defense analyst in both Hebrew and English, in February 2023. Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh in an article entitled Lawsuit Shmawsuit , note

3700-478: The grant-making process. It does not say that all grants should be denied to applications involving indecent or disrespectful artworks. Although the statute does not state how much weight the Advisory Commission should give these factors, the NEA has wide discretion in considering this provision. Also, the Court held that Finley carried the burden of demonstrating that there is a substantial risk that

3774-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in

SECTION 50

#1732797675207

3848-537: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains

3922-738: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; 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 ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish

3996-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It

4070-470: The litigation. From the outset, the NEA had argued that it could discharge this obligation simply by ensuring that the membership on the review panels reflected national diversity. But both the district court and the court of appeals decisively rejected this reading. Like the lower courts, Justice Souter's dissent disposed of this reading as inconsistent with the text and legislative history, as well as redundant because another statutory provision already required

4144-518: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,

4218-412: The meaning of chutzpah as stubbornness and contrariness from what he calls a tradition of "spiritual audacity" or " chutzpah klapei shmaya ": We are conventionally raised to believe that Jewish faith demands unwavering obedience to the law and the *law-giver. That attitude tends to cultivate a temperament of compliance and passivity. For conventional thinking, "talking back to God" smacks of heresy. But

4292-484: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had

4366-586: The most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by

4440-541: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to

4514-461: The number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of

SECTION 60

#1732797675207

4588-665: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in

4662-473: The rise in use of Yiddish words in legal opinion. They note that chutzpah has been used 231 times in American legal opinions, 220 of those after 1980. Chutzpah first appeared in a Supreme Court decision in 1998, in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley , when Justice Antonin Scalia used it to describe the NEA's brazenness in asking for government funding. The Polish word hucpa (pronounced [ˈxut͜spa])

4736-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with

4810-636: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on

4884-636: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this

4958-687: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. National Endowment for

5032-490: The word expresses a strong sense of disapproval, condemnation and outrage. Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defines the term as "that quality enshrined in

5106-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards

5180-586: The world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ‎ ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ‎ ( taytsh ), a variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ‎ ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ‎ ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become

5254-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged

5328-520: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction

5402-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to

5476-503: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. –  Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to

#206793