A pilgrimage into the past

History : A scene from childhood. My Romanian grandmother and her sister in conversation

History: A scene from childhood. My Romanian grandmother and her sister in conversation. The cut-glass British establishment accent of my grandmother cutting across the singsong Mitteleuropa inflections of my great-aunt.

My grandmother did not just object to the Yiddish that my great aunt spoke but also her rebellious vowels in English and her inability to tame and domesticate the telltale foreign intonation in the face of received pronunciation.

Both sisters arrived in England in the late 1890s. My grandmother decided - consciously or subconsciously - that ditching all ties and traces of her origins was the best way to survive. My great-aunt couldn't - or wouldn't - make such a compromise. Her forever melancholy yet humane presence accentuated her out-of-placeness. Most of the Yiddish proverbs and sayings I know I learnt from her.

Paul Kriwaczek is the son of Jewish refugees and has written Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation partly to connect with that history and, as he says, "to make sense of that loss of memory, to try and rescue that Yiddish past from its oblivion". Kriwaczek was born in Vienna in 1937, escaped with his family to England and grew up in London. Using his own childhood memories in 1950s London as a jumping-off point he embarks on a journey back in time.

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Kriwaczek sets out his stall early in his introduction to this potted history. Whilst he acknowledges the overwhelming tragedy of the Shoah, he wants, somewhat in Pollyanna fashion, to concentrate on something more positive: the thousand-year cultural and religious history of what he controversially calls "Yiddish civilization". He's already straying into dangerous territory with a concept like that but Kriwaczek is obviously not a man to be daunted. After all, he's galloping through the centuries at a swift pace, recreating wonderful pictures of lost communities of Jews, going from Roman times through to the 21st century with barely a pause for breath.

What undermines the integrity of his task is that he has chosen to be imprecise in definitions. In his introductory essay he states he is going to refer to "Yiddish-speaking people" as the "Yiddish people". This is entirely misleading. Throughout the entire book he interchanges with abandon and little distinction phrases such as "Yiddish nation" and "the Jewish people". This downplays the complexity of differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.

Linguists are still divided about Yiddish, spoken primarily by Ashkeni Jews. However, what is known for certain is that it evolved over centuries from a German dialect to a fully fledged language with elements of Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and Romance languages. Indeed, it was the exposure of Yiddish to Slavic language that hastened its emergence as a language in its own right. In the 15th century, Bohemia and Poland-Lithuania were fast becoming the vibrant centre of Jewish life in Europe. In 1618 a Christian chronicler noted: "In Lvov, in Lublin, in Poznan, and particularly in Cracow, not to mention Vilna, Mohilev, Slutzk, Brest- Litovsk, Lutsk and elsewhere, the Jews have in almost every brick house five, 10, 15 or 16 shops."

When Kriwaczek travels to a village near 21st-century Crakow he finds no Jews but gaudy souvenir dolls of Hassidic rabbis. The Christian population also suffers from a myopic amnesia. One taxi driver tells the author: "In the distant future Polish people will recount to each other stories of the time, long, long ago, when Jews lived among us. But they will be like the folk tales other nations tell their children about ogres, giants and fairies."

At key historic moments Yiddish was central to the development both of Jewish identity and to the development of economic and cultural life. It was also the lingua franca for the transnational networking of Jews in Europe. By the 1500s Yiddish was also the foundation stone for the evolution of a complex legislative and administrative system, the Council of the Lands throughout the countries of settlement, with rabbis adjudicating disputes, moral behaviour and regulating relations with the ruling monarch. By the 19th century Yiddish was more than a language of convenience for a beleaguered minority. It was the creative outlet for poetry, literature and drama and the means whereby Jews excluded from the artistic life of greater society could find expression. But, as pointed out by Kriwaczek, only a tiny handful of writers made a transition to international literary fame, eg Isaac Bashevis Singer and Isaac Babel.

Kriwaczek was a TV producer and his film-maker's eye conjures up and recreates baroque images and marvellous setpieces of feverish activity, long lost towns and shtetls. Just like a camera panning a landscape, in certain chapters Kriwaczek leads us through medieval streets, to Jewish inns, the Tanshoys or dancehall and bids us listen to the children chanting in the cheder, the schools attended by every Jewish boy above the age of 10.

"In Yiddish-speaking society, unlike the Christian world, any boy with intelligence, ability and the necessary sitsfleysh, no matter how humble or degraded his origins, could aspire to rise to intellectual eminence and rabbinical respectability," Kriwaczek tells us.

Yiddish was also a marker of class origins. Judaeo-German, one root of Yiddish, was the language of wealthy merchants in 15th-century Silesia. By the late 19th century Yiddish had been rejected by many acculturated Jews in Europe and England, whilst its main constituents became the Jewish working and artisan class. A brief revival in the East End of London and in America produced popular songs and drama. The emergence of American popular culture was hugely influenced by Jews. Kriwaczek reminds us that White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, son of a cantor, and was apparently inspired by memories of his childhood in Mogilev. However, for many of the second and third generation of immigrants, Yiddish was alternatively the mameloshen, or a burden and a secret to be guarded. Now, the grandchildren and great- grandchildren of those migrant Jews enrol in Yiddish classes in New York or Oxford in an attempt to capture a romanticised vision of the past.

Kriwaczek's thesis is that "Yiddish speaking Jews were no mere religious or linguistic minority but formed one of Europe's nations, ultimately more populous than others". What he has written is informative and very entertaining, but ultimately it is built on a false premise. Conflating and blurring the distinctions between religion, culture and ethnicity, he undermines the credibility of his own argument.

Katrina Goldstone is the Communications and Membership Officer of Create, the Irish arts development organisation. She is also a critic and has written extensively on Jewish history and culture

Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation By Paul Kriwaczek, Orion, £25.