Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Jabotinsky Speaking

Here's a too short excerpt from a speech Ze'ev Jabotinsky made in 1934 regarding the Jewish claim to TransJordan.

The speech was made for publicity purposes (in the full version I've seen, you can see his wife, Joseph Schechtmann and others sitting in a studio as if an audience) and he speaks in Yiddish. There are Hebrew subtitles.

Since I see Ze'ev Jabotinsky the grandson and the very end, obviously someone downloaded this from a television interview with him.

7 comments:

Daniel said...

fascinating!
However, his accent is alien to any Yiddih I have ever heard. He sounds like he is speaking hochdeutsch. Was that the way educated Jews spoke yiddish then? Was his a dialect that is now uncommon.
The yiddish of my bubbes and my chasiddishe friends sound quite different.

YMedad said...

a) first, he learned Yiddish as an adult, no that much from home use so I presume a heimische accent was lost to him;

b) the main language of the Zionist Congresses until the 30s was Hoch-Deutch which was when Yiddish-speakers attempted to speak a real Germna but were not that successful, myabe like a Cockney in Oxford

Daniel said...

Thanks. i never realized that he learned yiddish as an adult. Did he master english?

YMedad said...

He spoke about 15 languages and once made a speech in Belgium and each quarter of an hour altered his language - Dutch, Flemish, French and Yiddish

NG said...

Yes, he also mastered English - speaking, writing and translating.

mnuez said...

Absolutely amazing.

So far as the directional choices, I'm glad there was no Al Naharos Bavel imagery employed. Makes map-imagining simpler! :-)

"Ach Tishkach Yimini Habogedet Im Eshcach Et Smol Hayarden"

By the way, a somewhat older fella whose dad was both a Rabbi and a Jabotinskyite told me that Jabo would fast on Tisha Be'Av but not Yom Kippur. (If true) what do you suppose he would do today?

I'm afraid that were he to show up today he'd be so amazed at how recklessly and distractedly Jews are handling their lifeboat of a country that he'd just come to the conclusion that Jews simply aren't fit to run a country and he'd just give up on the endeavor. Two men, three opinions may be a fine quality to tout in the Beis Medrash but it does little to ensure the survival of a country.

Anyhow, a git yuntif! oon a gut gebentched yur...

mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com

YMedad said...

I don't think Jabo was religiously observant in any personal sense and doubt that he'd fast. Maybe it happened once.