Yiddish revival is at the center of Sweden – The Australian Jewish News
ACTOR in last month’s production of Waiting for Godot at Dramaten in Stockholm appeared neither in the original play’s original English nor in Swedish translation.
The performances marked the first time that a play in Yiddish was staged at Sweden’s national theater company.
– I did not want it anywhere else than in Dramaten, says Lizzie Oved Scheja, CEO of J! Jewish Culture in Sweden.
“We believe that Jewish culture should be a part of Swedish culture and that it should be presented on all major stages in Sweden.”
The three performances were almost full and attracted prominent audiences, including the Swedish Minister of Culture, which led Scheja to characterize the staging as “a triumph for a culture that was supposed to be wiped out during the Holocaust”.
In Sweden today, a maximum of 3,000 people out of a Jewish population of about 25,000 can speak Yiddish, according to the country’s Yiddish Society. That figure can also be an overestimation, given the small number of Charedi Jews, the population that most often speaks Yiddish in their ordinary lives and high assimilation rates.
But the language has a long history in the country, dating back to the 18th century when Jews were first allowed to settle there. The population of Yiddish speakers increased further in the early 20th century with a new wave of Jewish emigration, mainly from Russia, and after World War II, when thousands of Holocaust survivors arrived in Sweden, who had protected their own Jewish population from the Nazis.
In 2000, Yiddish became one of Sweden’s official minority languages (alongside Finnish, Sami, Meänkieli and Romani). The status of “cultural heritage” provided government funding for initiatives aimed at preserving the language.
At the same time, some younger Swedes have begun to reconnect with their heritage, in line with a trend that has taken place throughout Europe.
“There is a generation of people who are now in their 30s, 40s, 50s and find out that they are Jews,” says Oved Scheja. Their interest in Yiddish means that it is taught at the universities of Lund and Uppsala, and at Paideia, a 20-year-old Jewish institute in Stockholm.
Swedish Radio has a program dedicated to Yiddish called Yiddish Far All, or Yiddish for All, and two years ago a Swedish publisher, Nikolaj Olniansky, released a Yiddish translation of Harry Potter. The publication was partly financed by the state.
“Yiddish will survive and protect itself. As long as the Jewish people survive, the Yiddish language will also survive,” Scheja said.
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