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71-659: The stories were written in Yiddish and first published in 1894; they have been published as Tevye and His Daughters , Tevye's Daughters , Tevye the Milkman , and Tevye the Dairyman . As Tevye "tells" Aleichem the tales of his family life, six of his seven daughters (Tzeitel, Chava, Hodel, Shprintze, Taybele, and Bielke) are named, and of these five play leading roles in Tevye's stories. The stories tell of his business dealings,

142-734: A Yiddish-speaking comedic team called The Shmuliks; they were later joined by a third Habima actor, Shmuel Atzmon. The Three Shmuliks performed in Israel and abroad. In 1985, The Three Shmuliks were part of the Israeli delegation of actors, writers, and public figures invited by the Polish government to the 35th-anniversary celebration of the Yiddish State Theater in Warsaw. With Segal and another Habima actor named Goldenberg, Rodensky

213-545: 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,

284-658: A forged Polish passport, and finally immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1924. In his early years in Mandatory Palestine, Rodensky was employed in draining swamps, field work, and construction. He studied at the studio of drama at the Eretz Israel Theatre in Tel Aviv and performed with a number of theatre companies between 1928 and 1948, including the Eretz Israel Theatre, Hakumkum (The Kettle), and Hamatate (The Broom). In 1949 he responded to

355-492: 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

426-831: A newspaper advertisement seeking new performers at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv and became one of that theatre's principal players. He was known as "the Israeli Laurence Olivier ". At Habima, Rodensky performed a wide variety of dramatic roles, including Iago in Othello and the cardinal in The Deputy . He also performed satire , as in Ephraim Kishon 's 1953 play Yiddishpiel . Rodensky formed several artistic partnerships. He and another Habima actor named Shmuel, Shmuel Segal, created

497-509: A reading of the story "Chava" performed by Walter Matthau . Zero Mostel and Chaim Topol are the two actors most associated with the role of Tevye, although Theodore Bikel performed it many times on stage. For the film version of Fiddler on the Roof , the part ultimately went to Topol, as producer-director Norman Jewison felt that Mostel's portrayal was too unnecessarily comic. Topol was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in

568-644: 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

639-475: 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

710-487: 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

781-500: 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

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852-457: 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

923-588: 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

994-587: Is the Land ). He was cast as Reb Pinchas in the Israeli film Shnei Kuni Lemel ( The Flying Matchmaker ), which was the Israeli entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1966. Other notable roles included Tevye in the 1968 Israeli film Tevye and His Seven Daughters , Simon Wiesenthal in the 1974 Anglo-German film The Odessa File , and Jethro in the BBC television miniseries Moses

1065-498: 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 ,

1136-567: 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

1207-660: 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

1278-547: 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,

1349-632: 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

1420-586: 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

1491-536: 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

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1562-484: 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')

1633-565: 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

1704-431: 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

1775-655: 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

1846-525: The 1968 Israeli film Tevye and His Seven Daughters . In 1968 Rodensky traveled to Hamburg to join the German-language production of Fiddler on the Roof , titled Anatevka , which premiered on February 1. Rodensky became popular throughout West Germany for his portrayal of Tevye, performing the role more than 1,400 times. He also toured with a production in Switzerland. He appeared on

1917-525: The 1971 film version, played Tevye in a 2013–14 touring production in the United Kingdom. Tevya is the name of a 1939 film adaptation of the story, performed entirely in Yiddish. In this adaptation, Tevye, played by Maurice Schwartz , is portrayed as gruff with flashes of wit and humor. Prior to the 1964 Broadway debut of Fiddler on the Roof , adaptations of the Tevye stories appeared on stage and screen, in America and beyond. The earliest screen version

1988-592: 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

2059-441: The German-language production of Fiddler on the Roof (titled Anatevka ), playing the lead role of Tevye the Dairyman . He performed this role more than 1,400 times throughout West Germany and Switzerland. His notable film roles include the lead in the 1968 Israeli film Tevye and His Seven Daughters , Simon Wiesenthal in the 1974 Anglo-German film The Odessa File , and Jethro in the 1974 BBC television miniseries Moses

2130-723: The German-language recording of the Hamburg premiere. On September 4, 1972, the evening before a Palestinian terrorist group infiltrated the Israeli Olympic athletes' quarters during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich , the Israeli team attended a German-language performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Deutsches Theater in Munich as guests of Rodensky, the lead actor. The Israelis received glasses of wine during

2201-804: The Lawgiver . He was the recipient of numerous honors in both Israel and West Germany, including the Federal Service Cross from the Federal Republic of Germany and the Israel Prize . Shmuel Rodensky was born in Smorgon , Russian Empire , in 1902. During World War I he fled to Ukraine , but was expelled from the country during the Russian Revolution . He then traveled to Poland, entered Hamburg , Germany, on

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2272-628: The Lawgiver . Rodensky appeared in other film and television roles in West Germany and Switzerland. Rodensky received numerous honors and awards in Israel and West Germany. In 1983 he received the Federal Service Cross from the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Rudolf Küstermeier Prize in Tel Aviv, the latter recognizing his contribution to "the interpretation of Israeli culture in West Germany". Rodensky

2343-555: 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

2414-549: The Roof , staged at the Godik Theater . Rodensky went on to appear in 350 performances in Israel. During a 10–week absence due to illness, Rodensky was replaced by Chaim Topol , launching Topol's own career as Tevye on stage and screen. Rodensky briefly acted in a Yiddish-language production of the musical which was not as successful as the Hebrew-language ones. Rodensky reprised the role of Tevye on screen in

2485-421: The Roof was based on a play written by Arnold Perl called Tevye and His Daughters . Tevye the Dairyman has had four film adaptations: in Yiddish (1939), Hebrew (1968), English (1971) and Russian (2017). The name Tevye is the Yiddish derivative of the Hebrew name טוביה, Tuvya (i.e., Tobias ).. In Hebrew, the character is known as טוביה החולב, Tuvya ha-cholev , [ˈtuvja (h)aχoˈlev] , 'Tobias

2556-643: The Roof , the best-known adaptation. For instance, by the time of the events of Lekh-Lekho , Tevye's wife Golde, his daughter Shprintze, and his son-in-law Motl have all died; also in Lekh-Lekho , upon learning of the Jews' expulsion, Chava leaves her Russian Orthodox husband, wanting to return to her family and share their exile. Aleichem leaves it to the reader to decide whether or not Tevye forgives her and takes her back, saying: Put yourself in Tevye's place and tell me honestly, in plain language, what you would have done… (Hillel Halkin translation) . and ending

2627-598: 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 ,

2698-453: The dairyman'.. Tevye's full name, with its Yiddish patronymic, is Tevye ben Shneur Zalman. Tevye the Dairyman comprises eight stories, with Tevye each time supposedly meeting Sholom Aleichem by chance and relating the latest tale of his trials and tribulations. They have been published in translation under the following titles: Not all the events of the stories are depicted in Fiddler on

2769-556: 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

2840-532: 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

2911-445: 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"

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2982-723: The film version of Fiddler . He also portrayed the character nearly 3,500 times on stage, retiring the role in 2009. Other noteworthy musical Tevyes have included Luther Adler , Herschel Bernardi , Paul Lipson (original Broadway run, over 2,000 performances), Leonard Nimoy (1971 touring company), Shmuel Rodensky (original Israeli, Yiddish and German productions), Alfred Molina and Harvey Fierstein (2004 Broadway revival), Henry Goodman (2007 London revival), Danny Burstein (2015 Broadway revival), Yehezkel Lazarov (2018 touring company) and Steven Skybell (2018 Off-Broadway revival in Yiddish). Paul Michael Glaser , who played Perchik in

3053-493: The intermission and posed for pictures with Rodensky. The last play in which Rodensky acted was "The Spine", which premiered on January 10, 1988 at the Habima Theatre. He played the role of Dr. Willy. The production ran for only seven performances and then was closed in deference to Rodensky's illness. Rodensky died the following year. Rodensky first appeared on screen in the 1935 Israeli film Zot Hi Ha'aretz ( This

3124-431: 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

3195-590: 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

3266-631: 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

3337-522: 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

3408-518: 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,

3479-484: 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

3550-586: 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

3621-596: 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

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3692-461: 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

3763-665: 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

3834-501: The romantic dealings and marriages of several of his daughters, and the expulsion of the Jews from their village by the Russian government. The Tevye stories have been adapted for stage and film several times. Sholem Aleichem's own Yiddish stage adaptation was not produced during his lifetime; its first production, by Maurice Schwartz, was in 1919. (Schwartz did a film based on the play twenty years later.) The Broadway musical Fiddler on

3905-415: 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

3976-484: The story with "The old God of Israel still lives!" A 2009 translation includes a final short story titled Vachalaklokos that takes place after Lekh-Lekho . Other translations include: The story "Tevye Strikes It Rich" was adapted for children by Gabriel Lisowski in 1976 and published under the title How Tevye Became a Milkman". The Tevye stories have been recorded and commercially released twice: An audio production of Arnold Perl 's play Tevya and His Daughters

4047-636: 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

4118-417: 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

4189-695: 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. Shmuel Rodensky Shmuel Rodensky ( Hebrew : שמואל רודנסקי , 10 December 1902 – 18 July 1989)

4260-608: 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

4331-586: 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

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4402-461: 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

4473-458: 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

4544-473: Was a Russian-born Israeli actor whose stage, film, and television career in Israel and West Germany spanned six decades. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1924 and studied drama at the Eretz Israel Theatre in Tel Aviv . After performing with several theatre companies between 1928 and 1948, he joined Habima Theatre in 1949 and became one of its principal players. He was known as "the Israeli Laurence Olivier ". In 1968 Rodensky traveled to Hamburg to join

4615-423: Was also a member of Die Kleine Mentshalach ("The Little People"), a Yiddish-language trio that performed dramatic readings of works by Sholem Aleichem . Rodensky formed a third, satirical trio with Jacob Timen and Esther Gamlielit of Hamatate (The Broom Theater). In 1965, Rodensky replaced Bomba Tzur in the role of Tevye the Dairyman in the second year of the Israeli production of the musical Fiddler on

4686-414: Was an American silent film called Broken Barriers , based on Aleichem's own theatrical treatment and released in 1919 (just a few years after Aleichem died). In 1962, Gerhard Klingenberg directed the television film Tevya und seine Töchter . After Fiddler on the Roof became a Broadway sensation, an Israeli film called Tuvia Vesheva Benotav ( Tevye and His Seven Daughters ) starring Shmuel Rodensky

4757-470: 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

4828-416: Was named a Worthy Citizen of Tel Aviv in 1982. He received the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 1983 and the Meyer Margalit Prize in 1984. President of Germany Gustav Heinemann praised Rodensky as "Israel's greatest ambassador of reconciliation". Rodensky met his wife, stage actress Raya Nura Shein , when both were studying at the Eretz Israel Theatre. They married in 1928. Rodensky died of

4899-447: Was released by Columbia Masterworks in 1957 (OL 5225); the cast included Mike Kellin as Tevya, Anna Vita Berger as Golde/The Rich Woman, Joan Harvey as Tzeitl, Carroll Conroy as Hodl, and Howard Da Silva (who also directed the production) as Lazar Wolf/The Rich Merchant/The Rabbi. The NPR / Yiddish Book Center 13-part mid-1990s radio series Great Jewish Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond , hosted by Leonard Nimoy , broadcast

4970-652: Was released in 1968, as well as two Russian versions: Teve-molochnik ( Tevye the Milkman ) in 1985 and Myr vashomu domu! ( Tevye's Daughters ) in 2017. In 2018, Jerusalem Ballet published a ballet adaptation based on both Tevye the Dairyman and Fiddler on the Roof , by Russian ballet dancer - choreographer Igor Menshikov. Tevye has been portrayed by Israeli ballet dancer Meitar Basson. Yiddish Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit.   ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit.   ' Judeo-German ' )

5041-446: 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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