Yiddish

Before the Second World War, Yiddish had almost 11 million speakers worldwide, according to the YIVO Institute; it lost most of them, above all through the Holocaust¹. YIVO now estimates their number at between half a million and a million, mostly Hasidic and Haredi (strictly Orthodox) Jews in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel; the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger counts 3 million, based on dated figures (from 1986 for Israel to 2010 for Russia)¹.

The language remains an everyday language in Hasidic communities: in the Williamsburg and Borough Park neighbourhoods of Brooklyn (New York) alone, more than 150,000 people have it as their main language, according to a former YIVO education director¹. In Europe it has almost disappeared where it once dominated: the 2002 Polish census counted only 37 speakers¹.

In Israel, the State chose Modern Hebrew rather than Yiddish as its national language¹. In Sweden, Yiddish has been recognised as an official minority language since 2002, and a twenty-year programme aims to preserve it¹. In Finland, the Constitution guarantees the Sámi, the Roma and "other groups" the right to maintain and develop their language and culture³.

Yiddish is still taught, and is the language of instruction in many religious schools around the world¹. In Sweden, 18 of the 26 compulsory-school pupils entitled to it took mother-tongue tuition in Yiddish in 2023–24². University chairs and courses exist notably in Jerusalem, New York and Europe¹.

In Sweden the preservation programme includes radio programmes, amateur theatre and courses in Yiddish; in 2021 the National Theatre staged Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Yiddish¹. In Paris, the Maison de la culture yiddish, founded in 2002, produces a twice-monthly programme on contemporary Yiddish culture¹.

Yiddish theatres still perform in Warsaw, New York and Melbourne; world literature, down to Winnie-the-Pooh and Harry Potter, is translated into Yiddish¹. The Maison de la culture yiddish in Paris, with the Medem Library, is described as the leading centre of Yiddish studies and culture in Europe¹.