ABSTRACT
Euchel, editor of Hameasef and one of the first Hebraists, thrashed the mame loshn in trashy satire; Tuvia Feder tried the same, through mudslinging and pasquanade. His good friends and disciples in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, and Russia treacherously resorted to that old Jewish stratagem of informing the nobles. The case against Yiddish is so old and well known that the militant Hebraists have not presented one new agrument. Meanwhile Yiddish, together with its people, came a long way, changing its appearance, casting off the caftan for the work shirt, sprucing up with collar and gloves, and stepping out in tails and decolletage. In the process the Hebraists make an ugly laughingstock of themselves, turning the people’s hearts from the very language before which the Hebraists bow. What the Hebraists have given us that is positive is the idea of a language revivified.
