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Last update - 11:16 19/11/2007 E=mc2 sounded better in Yiddish By Ofri Ilani Tags: Albert Einstein, Yiddish  "Science and Scholarship in Yiddish" will be the topic of a symposium to be held today at Tel Aviv University. "We picked a subject that people don't even know existed," Professor Leo Corry, head of the Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, which is jointly sponsoring the symposium together with the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture. The symposium marks the publication of a special issue of the journal Science in Context, edited at the Cohn Institute in Tel Aviv and published by Cambridge University Press. The journal contains essays by leading scholars in a field that rescues from oblivion a variety of scientific works published in Yiddish. Advertisement Science in Yiddish is a vast and complex topic located at a unique crossroads between the history of science and the history of Jewish cultural life in Eastern Europe from late 19th century to the outbreak of World War II. But unlike Yiddish literature, Yiddish language and other phenomena of Jewish culture in Europe, the heritage of science and scholarship in Yiddish experienced neither an academic nor a public revival in recent decades. Rabbinic relativity A example of the phenomenon can found in a 1927 book by the Jewish mathematician and physicist Tuvya Shalit: "A rabbi was sitting in a train one Friday afternoon. The train breaks down and he's afraid he will desecrate the Sabbath. He starts praying 'God, please don't let me desecrate the Sabbath. Then, a miracle happens: Sabbath comes in to the right of the train, Sabbath comes in to the left of the train, but inside the train, it's still yesterday.' Over the years this joke made the rounds in Eastern European communities. But Shalit's book, to which Albert Einstein wrote a short introduction, presented it in his book as an example of Einstein's theory of relativity. Shalit's book was one of a number of scientific works written in the last century by Jews who wanted to transform Yiddish into the language of science for Europe's Jews. Shalit's work, the reception of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis in the Argentinean journal Davke, the work of the social scientist Jacob Lestchinsky, and others are all presented in the special issue of Science in Context. At home in Russia Following the Russian revolution, university Yiddish departments flourished and were state- supported in Ukraine and Belorussia; research in history, philology, ethnography, demography and more were published in Yiddish. But paradoxically, such research was meant to transform traditional Jewish identity into a secular, socialist, Jewish identity cut off from its religious and Hebrew roots. The movement ended in the early 1930s when hard-line Sovietization of social, cultural, and scholarly organizations became the norm. Another chapter of science-building in Yiddish was epitomized by YIVO, founded in 1925 and headquartered in Vilna. It functioned until the invasion of Lithuania by the German Army, and one of its key projects was the standardization of Yiddish scientific nomenclature. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Death of a heroine Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jews during the Holocaust, dies at 98. Apocalyptic tidings Holy See warns of nightmarish perils if Mideast nuclear arms race is not halted.   1.   Yiddish 15:39  |  Lev 19/11/07   2.   The neglect of Yiddish a Jewish tragedy 16:26  |  L A 19/11/07   3.   warmth or frost? 17:00  |  Eshkol Hakofer 19/11/07   4.   to # 2, dont follow you 17:38  |  ryddi 19/11/07   5.   dominance of English as a scientific language 17:54  |  Charles Nydorf 19/11/07   6.   Yiddish, my 2nd lenguage 18:41  |  Mexi 19/11/07   7.   Speaking of Einstein 18:55  |  MichaelF 19/11/07   8.   how do you say "conceited yiddishist bore" 20:02  |  Rowan Berkeley 19/11/07   9.   New Yiddish writing on science 20:13  |  Leye Robinson 19/11/07   10.   racists still attack Jews 16:03  |  NLF 20/11/07   11.   look who is commenting and how! 16:41  |  Eshkol Hakofer 20/11/07   12.   about Einstein 10:26  |  Tania 17/12/07   13.   Why the hateful talk about Yiddish? 19:10  |  Miransky 13/05/08   14.   Yiddish haters 21:12  |  plutzling 13/05/08

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