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92-531: Stanton Street Synagogue , also known as Stanton Street Shul and Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan ( Yiddish : קאנגרעגיישאן בני יעקב אנשי ברזעזאן , lit.   'Congregation Sons of Jacob, People of Brzezan'), is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue located at 180 Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan , in New York City , New York , United States. The synagogue

184-632: A Twitter feed and personal blog called Yutopia. In March 2014 Yuter announced that he would be stepping down as rabbi and moving to Israel. In November 2014, Rabbi Aviad Bodner succeeded Yuter. Bodner, who received his rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel , graduated from Bar-Ilan University and worked as a corporate lawyer in Tel Aviv before joining Stanton. Under Bodner's leadership, synagogue membership increased from about 30 member units to over 100. Stanton Street Synagogue

276-454: A pediment upon which the Yiddish name of the synagogue and its date of construction are engraved. The Star of David appears in four places: in an oculus over the main entrance; in a large, circular, stained-glass window over the pediment; engraved onto a stone tablet on the parapet ; and atop the stylized wrought-iron gate in front of the building. While the original Star of David design

368-532: A B.A. in computer science and an M.A. in Talmudic studies from Yeshiva University, and an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago . He previously worked as an applications developer for JPMorgan Chase and Information Builders . Yuter has applied his computer programming background to his rabbinic duties, posting his synagogue on Foursquare , a social networking site, in 2011 and maintaining

460-644: A Pentateuchal book ever found in a Holy Ark . The deciphered text fragment is identical to what was to become during the Middle Ages the standard text of the Hebrew Bible , the Masoretic Text , which it precedes by several centuries; it thus constitutes the earliest evidence of this authoritative text version. The scroll is badly charred and fragmented and required noninvasive scientific techniques to virtually unwrap and read. Torah reading from

552-441: A Torah scroll during his lifetime." It is considered a tremendous merit to write (or commission the writing of) a Torah scroll, and a significant honour to have a Torah scroll written in one's honour or memory. In modern times, it is usual for some scholars to become soferim and to be paid to complete a Torah scroll under contract on behalf of a community or by individuals to mark a special occasion or commemoration. Because of

644-458: A Torah scroll or Sefer Torah is traditionally reserved for Monday and Thursday mornings, as well as for Shabbat , fast days, and Jewish holidays . The presence of a quorum of ten Jewish adults ( minyan ) is required for the reading of the Torah to be held in public during the course of the worship services. As the Torah is sung , following the often dense text is aided by a yad ("hand"),

736-423: A Torah scroll: gevil and klaf . The ink used is subject to specific rules. The ink has to adhere to a surface that is rolled and unrolled, so special inks were developed. Even so, ink would slowly flake off and if the ink from too many letters is lost, a Torah scroll is no longer used. After the preparation of the parchment sheet, the scribe must mark out the parchment using the sargel ("ruler") ensuring

828-627: A brick back house, at a cost of $ 10,000. A decline in the Jewish population of the Lower East Side beginning in the 1930s and accelerating after World War II led to a decline in synagogue membership. In 1952 the synagogue merged with Bnai Joseph Dugel Macheneh Ephraim, founded by Polish-Jewish immigrants from Rymanów and Błażowa . In 1964 the congregation appointed Rabbi Joseph Singer, the Pilzner Rav, as its spiritual leader. Singer,

920-485: 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,

1012-458: A half years. An error during transcription may render the Torah scroll pasul ("invalid"). According to the Talmud , all scrolls must be written on gevil parchment that is treated with salt, flour and m'afatsim (a residue of wasp enzyme and tree bark) in order to be valid. Scrolls not processed in this way are considered invalid. There are only two types of kosher parchment allowed for

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1104-492: 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

1196-512: A metal or wooden hand-shaped pointer that protects the scrolls by avoiding unnecessary contact of the skin with the parchment. All Jewish prayers start with a blessing ( berakhah ), thanking God for revealing the Law to the Jews ( Matan Torah ), before Torah reading and all days during the first blessings of the morning prayer ( Shacharit ). According to halakha (Jewish law), a Torah scroll

1288-606: A native of Pilzno , Poland, who had fled the Nazis in 1939 and settled on the Lower East Side, served in this capacity until 2002, mostly without pay. Singer, who was also an employee of the United Jewish Council of the East Side, was known as a dedicated advocate for the poor elderly of the neighborhood. Under Singer's leadership, the synagogue served as a prayer and meeting place for immigrants and working poor of

1380-500: A nearby congregation. He was met with fierce resistance. In the ensuing conflict, Singer's family members removed the Torah scrolls from the synagogue. The congregants took the matter to a beis din (rabbinical court), which ruled that the sale could go through and part of the proceeds be used to pay Singer's pension. The congregants then took the case to the New York State Supreme Court . On October 29, 2002,

1472-644: 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

1564-475: 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

1656-559: Is a copy of the Hebrew text of the Torah handwritten on special types of parchment by using a quill or another permitted writing utensil, dipped in ink. Producing a Torah scroll fulfills one of the 613 commandments . Written entirely in Biblical Hebrew , a Torah scroll contains 304,805 letters, all of which must be duplicated precisely by a trained scribe, or sofer , an effort which may take as long as approximately one and

1748-487: 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

1840-571: Is done in a ceremony known as hachnosas sefer Torah , or "ushering in a Torah scroll"; this is accompanied by celebratory dancing, singing, and a festive meal. This practice has its source in the escorting of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem , led by King David . As described in the Books of Samuel , this event was marked by dancing and the playing of musical instruments ( 2 Samuel 6:14–15 ). Both

1932-485: Is in continuous need of repair. In keeping with its open door approach, welcoming lively Jewish culture of all kinds, the synagogue schedules frequent musical performances and events. These include "traditional Jewish music...Jewish rock 'n' roll, klezmer and avant-garde jazz" performances. The synagogue has also hosted art exhibitions. For Shavuot 2004, it commissioned artist David Friedman to produce "Borsch and Coffee: Floral Abstractions", an exhibition of 16 paintings in

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2024-536: Is often a major possession of a Jewish community. A chumash contains the Torah and other writings, usually organised for liturgical use, and sometimes accompanied by some of the main classic commentaries. While not in use, a Torah scroll ( Sefer Torah ) is housed in the Torah ark ( Aron Kodesh or Hekhal ), which in its turn is usually veiled by an embroidered parochet (curtain), as it should be according to Exodus 26:31–34 . The gold and silver ornaments belonging to

2116-405: Is one of the last surviving examples of tenement-style synagogue architecture on the Lower East Side. The three-story building, constructed of stone and brick, is situated on a standard 20 feet (6.1 m) by 100 feet (30 m) tenement lot. Its neoclassical façade has a tripartite design with a central entrance. Four cast-stone pilasters , each two stories high, support an entablature and

2208-500: 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

2300-457: 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

2392-588: 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

2484-419: Is still visible in the circular windows, most of the original colored glass has broken or fallen out. Behind the front entrance are stairs leading down to the main sanctuary and Kiddush hall. A wooden bimah (reader's platform) stands in the center of the sanctuary; the wooden Ark is placed to the north. The sanctuary has a tin ceiling and two skylight domes. The women's gallery , situated on two sides of

2576-498: 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 ,

2668-516: 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

2760-613: The Bialystoker Synagogue . The zodiac paintings are framed by marble pillars, which are in fact trompe-l'œil art. The wall around the Ark is decorated with folk art paintings of the Tower of David and Rachel's Tomb . The roof and fire escape were renovated by Li/Saltzman Architects in 2006–2007, and the main sanctuary was renovated by architect Ilan Ohayon in 2007. In 2018, with donations from community members and

2852-457: The Galician town of Brzeżany organized Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan as a mutual aid society in 1894. They built their synagogue on Stanton Street in 1913, with the encouragement of Rabbi Judah Leib Rose. He was to be the first Rabbi of their new building. . The tenement-style synagogue incorporated two existing structures dating to the 1840s, a three-story wood-frame front house and

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2944-660: 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

3036-548: 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,

3128-632: 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

3220-586: 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

3312-536: 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

3404-484: 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')

3496-682: The Spanish and Portuguese Jews (with the exception of the Hamburg tradition ), and the Judaeo-Spanish communities of the Ottoman Empire — also use tikim, though this is not always the case. The installation of a new Torah scroll into a synagogue, or into the sanctuary or study hall ( beth midrash ) of a religious school ( yeshiva ), rabbinical college, university campus, nursing home, military base, or other institution,

3588-565: 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

3680-431: 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

3772-655: 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

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3864-450: The 613 commandments, one – the 82nd as enumerated by Rashi , and the final as it occurs in the text the Book of Deuteronomy ( Deuteronomy 31:19 ) – is that every Jewish male should write a Torah scroll in his lifetime. This is law number 613 of 613 in the list of Laws of the Torah as recorded by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in his book "Biblical Literacy", 1st edition, New York: Morrow 1997, p. 592: "The commandment that each Jew should write

3956-592: 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

4048-468: The Hebrew text of the Tanakh , and the Torah in particular, is considered paramount, down to the last letter: translations or transcriptions are frowned upon for formal service use, and transcribing is done with painstaking care. Some errors are inevitable in the course of production. If the error involves a word other than the names of God the mistaken letter may be obliterated from the scroll by scraping

4140-482: The Lower East Side, most of them elderly, such as "former sanitation workers, bakers, rag vendors in their seventies and eighties". By 2000, most of the membership had died or moved away, and it was often difficult to gather a minyan (ten-man quorum) for prayer services. Rabbi Singer would arrange for food to entice potential congregants. While this led to a decent group at the post prayer kiddush , it did not attract more service attendees. In June 2000, Singer met with

4232-555: 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

4324-492: The Torah is also commonly printed and bound in book form for non-ritual functions, called a Chumash (plural Chumashim ; "five-part", for the five books of Moses), and is often accompanied by commentaries or translations. The researchers working on the En-Gedi Scroll have concluded that by the fourth century CE, there was no halakhic rule yet prescribing that scrolls used for liturgical purposes must contain

4416-405: The Torah scroll is a cause for great celebration, and honoured guests of the individual who commissioned the Torah are invited to a celebration wherein each of the honored guests is given the opportunity to write one of the final letters. It is a great honour to be chosen for this. It is a religious duty or mitzvah for every Jewish male to either write or have written for him a Torah scroll. Of

4508-598: 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 ,

4600-511: The donor's parents or other loved ones, and decorated with gold or silver. In the Mizrachi and Romaniote traditions , the Torah scroll is generally not robed in a mantle, but rather housed in an ornamental wooden case which protects the scroll, called a "tik", plural tikim . Some Sephardic communities — those communities associated with the Spanish diaspora, such as Moroccan Jews ,

4692-404: The downstairs Kiddush hall. Friedman incorporated "pigment, acrylic, ink, spray paint, marker, gold powder and, yes, borsch juice and coffee grounds" into his art, the latter as a tribute to one of the nonagenarian congregants who sets up the coffee and Kiddush on Shabbat mornings. Since 2004, the synagogue has held an annual event, either a Kiddush or sidewalk chalking gathering, memorializing

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4784-556: 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

4876-532: 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

4968-442: The entire Pentateuch. As of 2018, no other statements regarding when this rule came into being could be made with any degree of certainty. It must be noted that, while the physically determined date for the scroll points to the 3rd or 4th centuries, its text has been palaeographically dated by Ada Yardeni to the first century CE or the early second at the latest, a discrepancy not uncommon in this field, which could push back in time

5060-410: The entire discussion. The En-Gedi Scroll is a Hebrew parchment radiocarbon-dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE (88.9% certainty for 210–390 CE), although paleographical considerations suggest that it may date back to the 1st or early 2nd century CE. The charred scroll, found in situ in the synagogue's Torah niche, was discovered to contain a portion of Leviticus , making it the earliest copy of

5152-445: 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"

5244-410: The guidelines are straight. Only the top guide is done and the letters suspended from it. Most modern Torah scrolls are written with forty-two (42) lines of text per column ( Yemenite Jews use fifty-one (51)). Very strict rules about the position and appearance of the Hebrew alphabet are observed. Any of several Hebrew scripts may be used, most of which are fairly ornate and exacting. The fidelity of

5336-431: 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

5428-537: 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

5520-738: 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

5612-425: The letter off the scroll with a sharp object. If the name of God is written in error, the entire page must be cut from the scroll and a new page added, and the page written anew from the beginning. The new page is sewn into the scroll to maintain continuity of the document. The old page is treated with appropriate respect, and is buried with respect rather than being otherwise destroyed or discarded. The completion of

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5704-522: 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

5796-518: 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,

5888-500: The majority of members were under the age of 35. In 2002 the synagogue named Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld as part-time rabbi. He was succeeded in 2006 by Rabbi Yossi Pollak, a student of Open Orthodoxy advocate Rabbi Avi Weiss . In mid-2008, Rabbi Josh Yuter succeeded Pollak. In addition to his rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchonon Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University , Yuter has

5980-484: 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

6072-586: 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

6164-596: 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

6256-461: 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

6348-717: The parties settled with an agreement under which Singer would not try to sell the building and the congregants would not demand a financial accounting of the synagogue's revenues. Singer's family was also ordered to return the Torah scrolls . A supporter of the synagogue provided a three-year annuity to serve as Singer's pension. This episode fueled new interest in the aging synagogue and an influx of younger members to its ranks. New synagogue officers were appointed and grants were sought for repairs. By 2004 membership had topped 100, comprising "an intergenerational mix of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors, middle-aged empty-nesters and twenty- and thirty-something couples and families". In 2012

6440-467: The priests or kohanim and David himself "danced before the Ark" or "danced before the Lord". Special prayers are recited when the Torah scroll is removed from the ark and the text is chanted, rather than spoken, in a special melodic manner (see Cantillation and Nigun ). Whenever the scroll is opened to be read it is laid on a piece of cloth called the mappah . When the Torah scroll is carried through

6532-665: 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

6624-488: The rollers when the scroll is closed. Some scrolls have two crowns, one for each upper end. The metalwork is often made of beaten silver, sometimes gilded. The scroll-handles, breastplate and crown often have little bells attached to them. The housing has two rollers, each of which has two handles used for scrolling the text, four handles in all. Between the handles and the rollers are round plates or disks which are carved with images of holy places, engraved with dedications to

6716-553: The sanctuary, is no longer in use. Instead of pews, congregants sit in wood and cast-iron school desk-chairs produced in the early 1900s. Wall paintings around the main sanctuary depict the Zodiac signs for the twelve Hebrew months . Zodiac motifs were once common in synagogues on the Lower East Side, but with the demolition of most of these historic buildings, they are only seen at the Stanton Street Synagogue and

6808-413: The scroll are collectively known as kele kodesh (sacred vessels). The scroll itself will often be girded with a strip of silk (see wimpel ) and "robed" with a piece of protective fine fabric, called the "Mantle of the Law". It is decorated with an ornamental priestly breastplate , scroll-handles ( ‘etz ḥayyim ), and the principal ornament—the "Crown of the Law", which is made to fit over the upper ends of

6900-415: 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

6992-516: The synagogue and included it in his book, The Tribes of America . Cowan went on to write a best-selling book about the synagogue and its rabbi, Rabbi Joseph Singer, titled An Orphan in History: One man's triumphant search for his Jewish roots . On May 6, 2015, Jewish musical artists Shlock Rock and The Maccabeats released a music video remake of Minyan Man , shot in large part at the Stanton Street Synagogue. The Stanton Street Synagogue

7084-413: The synagogue fund, lay leadership, spearheaded by Jeff Katz, made urgent repairs and additional renovations to the roof, back wall, main sanctuary, and women's balcony. Community members and local artists Dory Bergman and David Wander restored several of the wall paintings in the main sanctuary with community member and volunteer Billy Bergman. While the synagogue is now considered viable, its aging structure

7176-553: The synagogue's board, which congregants alleged largely comprised Singer's own family members. They arranged to sell the run-down building to the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped , founded and run by a Jesuit priest, for $ 1.2 million, a reflection of the rising cost of housing in the neighborhood. Singer did not tell his congregation about the sale until March 2001, when he urged them to merge with

7268-451: The synagogue's congregants went to court over an attempt by its rabbi and board members to sell the aging structure to an organization run by a Jesuit priest. The resultant settlement and media attention led to a resurgence in interest in the synagogue. In 2012 its membership stands at about 100 congregants, representing a wide, intergenerational mix. The Stanton Street Synagogue was founded as an Orthodox congregation. Jewish immigrants from

7360-636: 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

7452-636: 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

7544-592: The victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911. Artists and synagogue board members inscribe the victims' names in chalk in front of the victims' former homes. In 2015, the Stanton Street Shul launched its monthly Stanton Kids tefila, which includes guided prayers for kids, singing, kid-friendly foods, and a special dvar torah by the rabbi. In the 1970s, The Village Voice reporter Paul Cowan came across

7636-692: 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. Torah scrolls The text of

7728-407: The work involved, these can cost tens of thousands of US dollars to produce to ritually proper standards. A printed version of the Torah is known colloquially as a Chumash (plural Chumashim ). Although strictly speaking it is known as Chamishah Chumshei Torah (Five "Fifths" of Torah). They are treated as respected texts, but not anywhere near the level of sacredness accorded a Torah scroll, which

7820-608: 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

7912-586: 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

8004-461: 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

8096-520: 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

8188-479: Was also featured in a scene of the 1979 movie, Last Embrace , starring Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin and the CBS TV movie Kojak : The Belarus File (1985). Yiddish language Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit.   ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit.   ' Judeo-German ' )

8280-616: Was constructed in 1913 by a landsmanshaft from the town of Brzeżany in southeast Galicia . The first Rabbi of the congregation, in their first building, was Rabbi Judah Leib Rose (1867-1946). He had arrived in New York in 1909 and encouraged the congregation to build the Shul on Stanton Street. One of the few surviving tenement -style synagogues, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. That same year,

8372-470: 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

8464-503: 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

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