Yiddish Was Official in Quebec
(May/June
2006)
Many Eastern European Jewish immigrants who arrived in Montreal during the first half of the twentieth century passionately believed that one way to remain Jewish, to be and live Jewish, to observe the human qualities of compassion, tolerance and moral sensitivity, was to use and preserve the Yiddish language for themselves and their children. They were also certain that God listened to Yiddish more attentively. They constituted the largest immigrant group in Montreal, and Yiddish was the third most widely used language, after French and English.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Jewish establishment frequently challenged the immigrants' use of Yiddish. The Jewish elite-even though some were fluent in Yiddish-was disdainful of the language, which it considered both archaic and uncouth.
The established Jews were integrated into Canadian society. Comfortable businessmen, some of them were employers and exploiters of the impoverished Yiddish-speaking immigrants, who proceeded to organize labour union locals in the sweatshops, which did not endear them to their bosses. The employers, no longer poor, resided in districts of the city inhabited by Anglo-Saxon community leaders, away from immigrant areas. They were well-meaning integrationists who sincerely believed that the use of Yiddish by the newly arrived East Europeans would impede their acceptance into Canadian society. As well, they sought to prevent the transplantation of insular Jewish communities of Eastern Europe into Canada. They also feared that a noticeable group speaking a strange tongue would adversely affect their own reputations vis-à-vis the Anglophone elite, as well as foment anti-Semitism. Perhaps they hoped to create Jews resembling themselves: bottles of sweet kosher wine enrobed in hollowed-out loaves of overly refined white bread-Jewish Anglo-Saxons. When Hebraist Anglophile Clarence de Sola, a powerful community leader, was obliged to distribute a Yiddish communiqué, he signed it in English.
Imagine the Jewish establishment's displeasure when in December 1914, Montreal's city council adopted a resolution declaring that Yiddish be recognized as a real language. The resolution was proposed by Alderman L. E. Lapointe, and seconded by Alderman Louis Rubenstein. It received unanimous consent. The resolution proclaimed that Jews who read only Yiddish newspapers had the right to be informed about municipal events emanating from City Hall, and that the city should advertise in these newspapers in Yiddish. English and French had hitherto been the only languages employed by the city to advertise in local newspapers.
The Yiddish daily, the Keneder Odler, predicted that Alderman Lapointe's name would be inscribed in the history of Montreal's Jews as the one who delivered the message that their right to be informed in the Yiddish language must be respected in order for them to properly participate in municipal affairs.
The Montreal Gazette reported that Alderman Lapointe's motion testified to the importance of Montreal's Jewish population. Jews were citizens, property owners and taxpayers, and as they read Hebrew (sic) newspapers, they should have official announcements published in their own language. The Gazette further reported that the "?point was raised how the city clerk could determine what was printed in Hebrew [sic] was really an advertisement. The matter was in the end left in the hands of the city clerk, who will use his discretion when to advertise in the ancient language of the prophets."
Exactly one year later, in December 1915, prominent Jewish intellectuals
in Warsaw, Poland, petitioned the occupying military power to have Yiddish
recognized as a real language. The German government rejected the petition,
stating that Jews themselves quarrelled over the validity of Yiddish,
and therefore the German authorities would not recognize it either.