‘You forget about your age’: Melbourne’s mature Yiddish students

Article by Miriam Hechtman originally from Plus61J (February 1, 2021): ‘You forget about your age’: Melbourne’s mature Yiddish students - +61J (plus61j.net.au)

MIRIAM HECHTMAN meets an assortment of Yiddish speakers who studied the subject for the VCE simply for the love of language and culture

REYZL ZYLBERMAN’S PARENTS knew they wanted to raise their children in a Yiddish speaking home. They were (and still are) very active Bundists, “so it was a big part of their view on what it means to be Jewish and how much Yiddish language and culture can add to your Jewish identity and how you see the world,” says Zylberman.

“What it did for me, was it taught me not just how to view the world as a Jew but also as a human as a part of a bigger world and there’s so much in Yiddish language and culture and literature that teaches you about different ways of being and responding to challenges.”

As a Yiddish teacher at Sholem Aleichem College (third in her family) and as the VCE teacher at Sholem Aleichem College Community Education Centre (SACCEC), Zylberman says she wants to impart this zest for Yiddish language and culture to her students. “It really shows you how this whole world can be opened up to you just by knowing another language and in particular this language.”

SACCEC is essentially a community language school system, registered as a non-school senior secondary provider. The school operates from the Sholem Aleichem School College campus and each year, adults and high school students that meet the prerequisites are encouraged to join the Yiddish VCE class. A firm grasp of reading and writing in Yiddish is necessary and all students are assigned student numbers.

2020 was no different, but when Covid hit in March, all classes moved to Zoom, whereby an eclectic bunch of 15 Yiddish students ranging in ages from 15 to early 70s met weekly online for two hours. There were a few families in the mix including Leah Justin, or ‘Layelle’ as she was called in class, and her brother, sister-in law and niece.

Justin, 72, who grew up speaking and writing in Yiddish with her Vilna born mother, says her Yiddish had diminished over time so enrolled for 2020 to improve her vocabulary, reasoning, “it’s a wonderful opportunity, we’re in Covid, we’re in lockdown, it will feed my head.”

The decision paid off. “The more you’re immersed in a language, the more words start to come. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much. You ‘putchker’ around so much and then all of a sudden it’s like, hey, I’m on this bike and I can ride! The language just comes.”

Her initial fear of becoming a student again and being graded was quickly disregarded. “You forgot about what age you were, forgot about anything other than just being in the space where you were being exposed to so many wonderful ideas and I think that’s really what carried us all along. You just lost two hours of your day in somewhere else. It was like going into the Tardis.”

The material too was incredibly fascinating, says Justin, dealing with meta-ideas of Jewish migration and Jewish identity. “So you were looking at articles through that lens. So it wasn’t just the shtetl or stuff like that, it was very of now. You were looking at writers, musicians, theatre, modern literature, Avant Garde poets in the 1930s. It was stimulating. We all loved it.”

26-year-old speech pathologist Daniel Goldberg decided to repeat his VCE Yiddish subject as a way to improve his Yiddish academically, specifically his grammar and vocabulary. Goldberg sits on the Bund committee and Yiddish Australia committee and during lockdown worked on video series Half-Baked Bund History for the Bund, mixing cooking and baking with Bund history.

“It was in English but to find the sources I read all these old Yizkor books.” He says studying VCE Yiddish again improved his reading and translating. “There’s so much written down in the past all in Yiddish so it’s great to be someone who can access that sort of stuff.”

Both Justin and Goldberg enjoyed the ease of having classes on Zoom, the ability to just log on, “no schlepping, no looking for parking,” quips Justin, and the intimacy created in that ‘screen of faces’ forum between students.

“I think it gives people more of a chance to share, it’s more structured, more people have an opportunity to say what they want to say,” says Goldberg. He also enjoyed the ‘endless enquiry’ available online, the many ‘Yiddish rabbit holes’, agrees Justin.

The diversity of the class was both surprising and pleasing and a reflection of how big and eclectic the wider Yiddish community is in Melbourne, notes Goldberg. “It’s funny how within the Jewish community there’s the Yiddish community and within that there’s a secular Yiddish speaking group, and within that there’s all the different organisations, the school, Kadimah, the Bund, etc,” says Goldberg.

Goldberg’s father also joined the class as a student, “first time he has properly sat down to learn Yiddish since Sunday school”, and Goldberg’s grandfather, owner of the renowned ‘Goldies’ restaurant on Melbourne’s Little Collins Street, also made special appearances and shared stories with the class.

Ultimately, the class was inclusive and supportive. “Just jump in, it doesn’t matter and have a go. That’s what this course taught me,” says Justin. “There was no sense of judgment, more a sense of such huge encouragement and so much affirmation that you were having a go.”