Reviving Yiddish, and Jewish Souls, at the Minsk Jewish Campus

The Yiddish language has gone through stages in Belarus that have, in many ways, been a bellwether of the region’s Jewish community.

As the heart of the Pale of Settlement—an area relegated by Czarist decree for Jewish inhabitants—Belarus served as a hub of Yiddish language, theater, and culture. So commonplace was Yiddish in many Belarusian towns that historically it was even the lingua franca of many non-Jews dwelling in these overwhelmingly Jewish villages.

It is estimated that by the 1930s there were more than 1,200 Yiddish schools and several teacher-training institutions, as well as departments of Jewish studies and chairs of Yiddish language and literature at the Universities of Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk. Yiddish, in fact, was so prolific that it was among the four official languages of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic displayed on the emblem of Belarus; the others were Russian, Belarusian, and Polish. There were also Yiddish puppet theaters, drama societies, and daily Yiddish papers throughout the Belarusian Soviet Republic and throughout the Soviet Union.

Today, less than two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Yiddish is experiencing a renaissance that mirrors that of Jewish community life.

While there are no Yiddish schools or newspapers in Belarus, hundreds of elderly Jews are popping up and identifying themselves as "Yiddophiles."

The JDC-supported Minsk Jewish Campus (MJC) now hosts two Yiddish language courses. One is "Shmues," a Yiddish-language and culture club organized by the JDC-sponsored Hesed social welfare organization located in the MJC. Hesed also has a Yiddish puppet theater, Yiddish choir, and even puts on an annual Yiddish-only Purimspiel (traditional Purim play).

"Learning and expressing themselves in the language of their childhood is, especially for these seniors, a way to connect back to the Jewish heritage that was denied to them for so many decades," offers Erica Fishbein, JDC’s 2006-2007 Jewish Service Corps (JSC) volunteer in Minsk.

The second language program is "Momoloshn" ("mother tongue" in Yiddish), a weekly lesson headed by Valentina Pugachova—one of the only official Yiddish teachers in Belarus—at the Minsk Society of Jewish Culture, also housed within the MJC.

"She puts her heart and soul into teaching," observes Erica. "Her warm smile and even her bright orange hair invite and engage everyone!"

Valentina’s first childhood memories are of her life in the Minsk ghetto. She, like most other Jewish Minsk residents, has relatives who were among the 5,000 Jews murdered by Nazis in the Yama pit in the center of Minsk.

Despite the dangers, Valentina and her husband spoke to one another in Yiddish during the Soviet era, determined not to forget their national language. And since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Valentina has had the pleasure of openly sharing her knowledge with other Yiddish enthusiasts every Tuesday evening.

"The way I see it, language is an essential element of identity and we, Belarusian Jews, were robbed of our identity for 70 years," shares the kind-eyed woman. "I teach Yiddish not only to revive the almost-dead language, but also to find the Jewishness from within Jewish souls that was abused for so long. And I learn from my pupils that despite the difficult past, there still are Jewish souls in Belarus."

October 2007