CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS: 1. Roman I was a vassal of Poland and thus a representative of the Polish government, but was not from Poland. He was a native of Romania. Forgive my poor wording. 2. My maps of New York in 1885 and 1889 depict the IRT 3rd and 9th Avenue elevated lines but not the 2nd and 6th Avenue lines. All four lines began operation in 1878 and this will be corrected in all future videos. And yes, the East Side of Manhattan used to have decent service.
Just a question on the Jewish emancipation of 1878 at 15:15 Canada is listed as having Jewish emancipation in 1867 with an asterisk I’m curious as to why that is? Did only parts of Canada grant emancipation or were their laws that prevented full emancipation?
I was scrolling through your videos, but unfortunately there I couldn't find an episode dedicated to the Jewry of Austria-Hungary. It's kinda odd that Romania gets it's own episode, despite the fact that the Jewry of the dual Monary was much more numerous and influential. Here's a list of noteworthy Jews born in Austria-Hungary (mostly Hungary).: Bánki Löwinger Donát (Bánk, 1859 - Budapest, 1922) scientist/engineer, invented the carburator. Bíró Schweiger László József (Budapest, 1899 - Buenos Aires, 1985) invented the ball pen. Frommer Rudolf (Pest, 1868 - Budapest, 1936) inventor of the semi-automatic pistol. Gábor Günszberg Dénes (Budapest, 1900 - London, 1979) Nobel prize winner, inventor of holographic image projection. Goldmark Péter Károly (Budapest, 1906 - Port Chester, 1977) inventor of the television. Kármán Tódor (Budapest, 1881 - Aachen, 1963) one of the progenitors of modern, super and hypersonic rocket- science. "Patron saint" of the U.S. Airforce. Bródy Imre (Gyula, 1891 - Auschwitz 1944) inventor of the krypton-gas lightbulb. Gestetner Dávid (Csorna, 1854 - London, 1939) invented the stencil printer. Korda Dezső (Kisbér, 1864- Zürich, 1919) invented the variable capacitor. Schwarz Dávid (Keszthely, 1850 - Vienna 1897) invented the steerable airship. Szilárd Leó (Budapest 1898- La Jolla, California, 1964) discovered the nuclear chain reaction, co-creator of the first atomic bomb. Teller Ede/Edward Teller (Budapest - Stanford, California, 2003) co-creator of the atomic and creator of the hydrogen bomb.
as a Germanist (academically), and someone who's of Jewish (and German) descent- i can tell you that recently there's been a fairly large uptick in young people of secular or non-Orthodox religious backgrounds studying Yiddish as a way to reconnect with their ancestry. it's why i learned Yiddish.
I found old documents from when my great grandfather came to America. They used to speak Yiddish as a native tongue. Growing up nonreligious and now religious, I wish to learn Hebrew first. Today I have noticed the younger generation being more antiIsrael or antizionist and so they adopt silly ideas such as Hebrew is Zionist and Yiddish is a way to boycott and fight against Zionism.
finally, a piece of my family history! to my knowledge, my great-great-great grandfather fought in the romanian war of independence (1877-78), and is buried in a military grave in the jewish cemetery in bucharest if he did indeed gain citizenship that way, that might explain how my family stayed in bucharest until my grandfathers time very interesting stuff about the theater! i only ever knew about jewish involvement in showbiz in the us
At 1:03 slight correction: it should be specified the 350ish are only the ancestors of the Eastern Ashkenazim. Western Ashkenazi (Germany, Netherlands, Alsace, France, Switzerland etc.) Were always less Yiddish speaking than those of the east because were descended from the survivors who stayed, not the 350 or so who went to Poland.
@@nennoable I speak Spanish, so there's a lot of Ladino I can understand, similar to how North Inland American English is my native dialect and I can understand Geordie, but I don't speak Ladino or Geordie themselves.
As a non Jewish Romanian, I find your videos very informative! But the "eastern Hungary" map in the beginning put me a little on edge there, XD. Continue on with the good work!
Great to hear all this! My maternal grandparents are from Iasi/Jassy, and came to the US during this time (1883, 1906). One note: You might mention that Goldfaden will also always be remembered for Rozhinkes mit Mandlen.
as a romanian its very interesting learning about these things from youtube of all places, ive learned about those people in school but never their antisemitic laws nor the purges of jewish people in my city. eye opening stuff
Your videos are always very interesting and this one was no exception! As it seems like we are going to take a look at what was going on in the Russian Empire in the 1860s, I suddenly remembered the tragic and quite symbolic figure of Michał Landy (1844-1861), and wanted to ask you, are you familiar with the name?
I visited the jewish theatre in Iaşi, it is the most beautiful theatre i’ve visited so far. The theatre’s name is a basic “national theatre” but in wikipedia it states that it has been one of the first yoddish theatres in the world
Very interesting video. Bit tangential, but the discussion of Yiddish Theatre reminds me of a play I watched for my History on Stage class, "Indecent," based on the story of a Yiddish playwright who got into legal trouble with US censors over one of his plays, "God of Vengeance." It's a good play, would recommend.
@@SamAronow Yeah, while the play was provocative in Europe, it got into legal trouble after being brought to the US. Perhaps New York censors would be more appropriate phrasing, though, as the trouble came from the state government rather than the federal one. There were a lot more laws restricting artistic expression in America back then, and as God of Vengeance was quite provocative for the time in multiple ways, the play was shut down after being deemed to violate the New York penal code, and its crew were all tried for obscenity.
I'm astonished and soo ecstatic that somebody does really cover this topic! I'm a German historian, who has written his BA thesis on Cuzas politics concerning the Romanian jews. Although I would add some points here and there (e.g. pronunciation of the names) your summary of this - highly crucial time - is unmatched so far. Thanks man, really. You gained yourself a new follower.
I’m assigned a very open ended history project. Do you have any recommendations of anything that happened 1750-1886 in anywhere besides the USA or western and Northern Europe? (Particularly if it’s successful Jewish resistance.)
I love the choices of music for your videos. I'm grateful to the many fine composers of the past and the many performers whose work is readily available to listen to. Thank you for matching them up so well.
20:00 What about Italy? As you mentioned in previous video, emancipation was going pretty well. Not to mention, that there already was a large Romanian diaspora there. (Even today, the largest Romanian diaspora is in Italy). Or even the Netherlands.
For all the progress Italy was making at the time, it still wasn't doing great economically. Lots of people there were emigrating to the US, France, and Britain. The people moving _to_ Italy for the most part were people with family ties to the country who wanted to help rebuild it.
Also, the Romanian diaspora in Italy is recent. Up until 2000 it was insignificant. It greatly increased after Romania joined EU. In 2001 there were 75.000 Romanians in Italy, compared to 1.138.000 Romanians in 2020.
The petition to support the Jews of Romania originally started with the Jewish Community of Indianapolis. It was spearheaded by major Jewish merchants and Senator Morton of Indiana, who was close to the Jewish community of Indianapolis and was one of the biggest supporters of addressing the Romanian Jews's plight in the US Senate and helped to guide it through the Senate to President Grant's desk.
Thanks for making this video about my country,very interesting we are/were thought about Focșani and how the politicians were not happy about the (foreign forced) emancipation in the Russi-Turkish war/Romanian war of independence and other parts of the jewish romanian history,but not much on the "pre-pașoptiști(48-er) period".
A lot of very famous German writers from the early 20th century were actually from those yiddish jewish communities in Galicia and Bukovina, like Paul Celan, Rose Ausländer, Joseph Roth, Mascha Kaléko etc.
I love your channel. I also love food, and being from Los Angeles, we are very proud of our Jewish pastrami places here. Pastrami first came from Jewish emigrants from …Romania. It’s a Romanian word. Perhaps you can sneak in a Jewish food history program or two.
A little correction: Yiddish was the one evolving from the German stock so much that general intelligibility was declining. Until the 16th century there was even a shared literary dialect between Western and Eastern dialects, which can be clearly identified as German. Medieval German texts can still be mostly read by German speakers today, as German is a relatively conservative language, while Yiddish evolved away from it. This was mostly a result of slavification but also created certain own grammatical structures, like some cases collapsing and differences in forming the conditional among others. In general though, even Eastern Yiddish was intelligible to German speakers if they were from the same region in Eastern Europe (like the Zipsers in the Bukovina) and the original Dialects Yiddish evolved from can still be clearly identified today.
As you mentioned the Yiddish Litvak literature, it would be very interesting to know more. My fellow historian from Vilnius who worked at the university library claimed that there were a number of Vilna-centric popular novels published in Yiddish in late XIX- early XX century. As I am from Kaunas in the Old town we have almost parallel streets named after both L. L. Zamenhof and Abraham Mapu, both of whom spent some time here. So, expansion on topics of popular culture and literature would be fascinating
The short version: under Emperor Alexander III, the Yiddish-language press was once again restricted to just a couple cities, of which Vilnius was one and quickly became the main publishing center because it was a mostly Mitnaged (neither Hasidic nor Maskil) community and didn't experience much violence. It was also very close to the border with Prussia, where a fair number of authors had fled to avoid censorship.
I first went to Romania shortly after the fall of Ceaușescu, and remember being astonished to find there had once been a large Jewish presence in the country.
Iirc from a comment on Minhag America, there's 3 more. He said he's saving German unification. So I'm guessing that's after Russia. Dreyfus is probably next series
Thank you for sharing this history of Romania. I know my maternal grandfather was born there, and that as a baby his family escaped from a pogrom and arrived at a safe haven. I had no idea, until I listened to this video, just how bad things were in Romania. Thank you for all this knowledge.
Hannah Arendt (in Eichmann in Jerusalem), calls out Denmark and Bulgaria as particularly resistant to the Nazi Holocaust - the Danish case is famous, the Bulgarian one less so, but no less admirable. She calls out Romania as one of the most vicious, to the extent that even the SS (which preferred a more efficient, "scientific" approach) was appalled. It's incredible that the outcomes differed so much from Romania to Bulgaria, when they were neighbors. So I was interested to watch this one to get the background for why Romania was so anti-Jewish, and Sam delivered.
@@cv990a4 because in ww2 romanian lands of Bessarabia and Bucovina were occupied by the soviets WITHOUT A FIGHT. Deportations and massacres of romanians by soviet NKVD and local collaborators of different ethnicities(jews included) took place. Carol II instead of taking full responsibility for his disastrous rule blamed jews for this and after his removal, Antonescu inflated even more the jewish participation in anti-romanian actions in occupied territories. So the reason is simple why we romanians were so angry at them, because we wieved them as soviet collaborators not because of racial things like the nazis. For this reason Antonescu refused to send them in nazi concentration camps justifying it that "they were his jews and it is a Romanian question that must be resolved by the romanian authorities" and decided to act selectively. The jews in Romania for example weren't on a state of terror like the ones in Bessarabia, Bucovina and Transnistria. Antonescu wanted to exterminate all the jews, even the ones in the reign were about to be exterminated but they were saved by the decision to stop the killings and sending them to Palestine by the government after the events of Stalingrad (a fact recognized even by the former Israeli president Shimon Peres). So yes, Romania is responsible for killing but at the same time saving jews. Bulgaria saved their jews that had bulgarian citizenship but couldn't do anything for those in Macedonia and were forced to hand them over the nazis. Albanians the same. Almost every people had criminals and saviors of jews. About what Hannah Arendt says about the "SS being appalled", honestly I see something similar about other nazi collaborators through Eastern Europe and Balkans, so I find it irrelevant.
Yiddish was used by Jews as the speaking language, everyday language while Hebrew was for Holiness, prayer, learning and unpolluted speech, another words: Loshen Kodesh was reserved for good holy speech while Yiddish was the lingo Franke . In Germany it sounded a little different than when Jews moved to Poland and they incorporated some Polish words. This same practice happened in Spain, called Ladino.
What Goldfaden did sounds very much like the British Music Halls of the Victorian age or the French Vaudeville. Was he aware of those particular styles of variety entertainment or is this a a case of necessity being the mother of invention?
A badchen did entertain at weddings. However, Bar Mitzvahs in Europe were low key events. It is highly unlikely that Goldfaden's locals had performed at Bar Mitzvahs.
So would I, but I try very hard not to allow New York to stake an exclusive claim on Jewish-American history and culture at the expense of all other localities, as is usually the case in popular culture.
I love how early Zionism isn't its own chapter in any of the videos or a video on its own, but rather is glanced and referenced as just another thing that started this time.
For Hebrew speakers watch HaRav Yitzchak Cohen on Shiv'im lashonot part 2 to get a proper Torah perspective on all Jewish languages. In any case these videos don't do justice to the reason the Rabbis encouraged the Jewish people to make these languages in the first place. The Jews could not use Lashon Kodesh (not the modern, corrupted Hebrew) for mundane talk and they did not want to use lashon goyim (for all those anti semite idiots watching, it is NOT derogatory and I am non Jewish since I did not finish conversion) so they invented these hybrid languages where a lot of the grammar was of the native country (German for Yiddish, Spanish for Ladino, Tajik-Farsi for Bukhori etc.) but it was infused with a fair bit of Hebrew and Aramaic vocabulary to make it indistinguishable from what their neighbors spoke. They also added other new words that were not found in those languages.In so many words a "Parve" language was created for moat communities in the exile. Even the Jews in places that did not experience anti Semitism like my native India, the Jews made Judeo Malayalam and Judeo Marathi as their native dialects; referring to the 2 largest continous diasporas of Indian Jews. This is all Yad HaShem in action, as you can see most of them were usually not aware of a Jewish language being constructed in another part of the world.
6:02 I don't understand. Just a few hundred man, less than a thousand by various sources I've found, took control over almost all Walachia and Moldavia? How is that even possible? Did the Romanian people just supported the Greeks to take over?
demoralization, that's how. Same thing happened with the Aztecs, Taliban, various African tribes. Colonization is only hard when the target is homogeneous AND united. This is why England conquered India and not France.
Some tried to gain Romanian(well Moldavian and Wallachian independence). On the ruler position of the countries,this was the phanariot era,people of the Phanar street(the origin of the name for the period) in Constantinople(i.e. greeks bought the throne for years,fun fact Michael the Brave was one of the,half-greek apparently). And the boyars…they were boyars. Let me say there is a reason why we see the one who impaled the old boyars and put the young one to build a fortress to death as a national hero and call upon him to come back do it again(I am talking about Vlad III Drăculea-Țepeș). Edit: here is the invocation i am talking about if somebody is interested: "Rise once more, o Tepes ! Take and divide these men(mostly politician) As lunatics and rogues in two big tribes, and then In mighty, twin infirmaries by force both tribes intern, And with a single faggot prison and madhouse burn."-Scrisoarea a III-a by Mihai Eminescu(national poet of Romania)
He really hatem them politicians and phanars. "These pickpockets of honour who on a tightrope dance, And wear their fancy costumes with perfect elegance. Of Virtue and The Nation our liberal prates, till sure His daily life you'd fancy must be as crystal pure? You'd never dream him being a cafe haunting knave, Who mocks at his own sermon, so solemn, and so grave. O could you see the brigand that no conscience has nor soul With his hang-dog expression and heavy, sullen jaw, A hunchback, evil-visaged, a spring of cunning greed, Who spouts out for his comrades some poisoned, nonsense creed. Upon each lip is Virtue, and in each heart deceit; A set of wicked monsters and wrong from head to feet Who round their patrons stagnum, as standing; as those who Gods admire, Will roll protruding frog eyes, bright with their hearts' aspire. Such men become our leaders, its laws' our country give, Men who at best from kindness should in a madhouse live Clothed each in madmen's jackets, a fool's cap on each head. But no... they teach us wisdom and make our laws instead. Patriotism ! Justice !... Such guardians of our State Despise the laws as nonsense that they themselves create. As sly as artful foxes will they the benches throng Frenetically applauding our country game and song; Then meeting in the Senate each others praises speak This heavy-throated Bulgar, that long and hook-nosed Greek. Each claims to be Romanian, whatever mask he wears, These Bulgo-Greeks pretending that they are Trajan's heirs; This poison froth, this dung-heap, this foul and filthy brood Have they indeed inherited our nation's master hood ! The scourings of everywhere, the abortive and the maimed, All that man rejected and nature has disclaimed, These crafty, greedy gluttons, these grasping Phanariots To us they all have flooded and pose as patriots. Until at last these nothings, this foul and loath full scum, These cripple-minded stammerers lords of our land become."
I am not a Jew, nor a member of any minority where I live, so maybe I cannot fully understand the problem, but Kogalniceanu‘s conditions for emancipation seem pretty reasonable to me. In order for a populace to have the benefits of full citizenship of a state, you have to actively participate in it. You can not have your own institutions or your own laws. Am I missing something?
Yes, for reasons of both principle and facts on the ground. First, principle: I'm going to guess that you're in an English speaking country, in which case you're accustomed to a political system based on the premise that all people have inherent political rights, regardless of whether or not they are recognized as such by the powers that be. Under such an understanding, human rights are unconditional, and this was supposedly the guiding principle behind the Romanian national program- yet they denied this principle to Jews. Second, facts on the ground. By this time, Jews _weren't_ still an estate of the realm. Rather, they were Romanian nationals without citizenship. In the brief period that they had access to the military and public schools, they availed themselves of it. And inasmuch as pre-revolutionary Jewish institutions still existed, they were entirely private and voluntary. So Kogalniceanu was proposing a solution to a problem that didn't exist, and did so purely in order to placate a faction that could not be placated, seeing Jews purely as a threat to Romanian "racial purity" by virtue of their very existence.
@@SamAronow Thank you for your quick answer. The second point made me understand where you are coming from and you are probably correct about the way we should evaluate Kogalniceanu's position historically, but I still disagree with your first point. Of course I don't want anybody to be discriminated against or treated unfairly, but I don't think that insisting on the monopoly of the state to law and education is violating the human rights of minorities. They should not have the right to be judged by their own laws and they should not have their own seperate educational systems. They should also not be exempt from conscription. The modern state is a universal state and that's a good thing.
Are you sure about Yiddish dying out in the west? My family immigrated to the US from the Saarland area around 1900 (they returned for one visit in 1922), where they had lived for at least 200 years. Yiddish and German were both spoken in the home for the first and second generations; the last native speaker in the family only died in 1986.
It died out quite rapidly in the 1980s. There's a fantastic book about it "Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books". Really fun read!
@@alpacario336 Those mostly speak the eastern-accented Yiddish, being Litvaks and the like. My question was specifically about the western accent. I am aware that Yiddish still persists, though it is mostly confined to Ashkenazi haredim.
@@KosherCookery I myself don't currently speak nor have studied much Yiddish, so sadly I would not know. My area is mainly Western, with a few Litvaks and Ukrainians. I don't know about the accents though.
As a Romanian, I can say that some of the historical facts are wrong. Alexandru Ioan Cuza was an important historical figure in the history as he was elected as a ruler (domnitor) in Wallachia and Romania in January 1859, which allowed the union between the 2 countries, but he was not a prince. Secondly, it is known that in the Transylvania region there were Romanian ethnics living, region ruled back then by the Austro-Hungarians. Many political figures that came to the newly founded Romania were from Transylvania and a common believe at the time was that Jewish people were spy of the empire. Not only Jewish people were oppressed at the time, but Romanians ethnics that were not nobility. In the Transylvania region, Romanians had barely any rights, so the hate grew. Alexandru Ioan Cuza was the first one to create the 4 educational years mandatory for all which created an opportunity for country-side population, which was not well viewed by the nobility who were exploiting them. As a conclusion I can say that the Jewish population were suffering as well as the Romanian and other minorities.
Your map of linguistic dialects is totally off. Western Dialects extend into France. German Jewish dialects are just "Yiddish", and practically never existed.
@@SamAronow Yiddish is seen as language of diaspora of Israel and is frowned upon because of that, moreover the revival of Hebrew have rendered Yiddish obsolete in Israel.
Russification isn't actually racial apartheid, but an active effort to homogenize the language and culture of a polity. Apartheid is when the races are separated by law and rights are given to, or withheld from, individuals based on race or ethnicity. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but Gaza and the West Bank are interesting examples :) Edit: To be fair, the PRC also institutionalizes apartheid. Still shit company, tho.
If you check out my video on the Russian Haskalah, you'll find that the Russians made a very clear distinction between those groups whom they believed to just be Russians by another name (Belarusians and Ukrainians), those who they believed could and should be Russified (other Europeans), those who couldn't be Russified and just needed to be contained (non-Europeans or non-Christians), and the Jews who they saw as a sort of Holy Whipping Boy. They built an entire legal regime around it, so I'd say it qualifies. Some of the wackier Rebel politicians in the latter part of the American Civil War even suggested adopting Russia's system of absolute monarchy and multi-tier racial fanaticism (conceiving of different classes of whites as secretly being separate races as well, via eugenics and pseudohistory).
@@SamAronow Russification is about cultural assimilation. I'm not arguing that there weren't institutionalized barriers to religious minorities. I was just pointing out that you were conflating the two. I actually like your content (not a fan of the partisan jabs, but nobody's perfect), and criticisms like this are meant to sharpen your mind and tongue, so you can climb to new heights.
Its ironic that Israel treats Palestinians much the same as Jews were treated from time to time in Europe. Thats not lost on observers who are watching the current events in Israel. Its always the same with any group: you do what you know.
Your statement is completely wrong. Yiddish is an independent and sophisticated Jewish language which has embodied Ashkenazic culture for more than a thousand years. The Yiddish language is rich and varied and is a serious academic discipline worthy of respect and admiration. Before World War II, Yiddish was the majority Jewish language in the entire world. Why don't you read some excellent Yiddish literature in translation before making untrue (and antisemitic) remarks? As many as 40% of English vocabulary is derived from Latin and French, but English is certainly not a creole and neither is Yiddish. [This comment has been written by a professional Yiddish (Slavic and French) linguist whose mother tongue is Yiddish. He has taught authentic Yiddish to thousands of college students and was a Yiddish journalist for many years (with articles published in France, America and Israel. ]
Just wanted to mention, that nearly everything you said in the beginning was wrong. Karl IV protected the jews and wrote it in the golden bull. And the dialects in germany are literally everywhere diffrent, there was no high german yet. The first to generalize the german language was Martin Luther in the translation of the bible.
