Yiddish Cartography

 יידיש (Yiddish) is historically the language of the אשכנזים (Ashkenazim) in מזרח-אייראפע (Central and Eastern Europe). Just a century ago, there were 11–13 million Yiddish-speakers among 17 million Jews worldwide. 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish-speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and migration to Israel further decreased the use of Yiddish.

Yiddish was birthed in a diaspora, and now lives on in a diaspora from the place that birthed it. It survives today in small pockets throughout the Jewish diaspora in places like ניו יארק סיטי (New York), מאנטרעאל (Montréal), and לאנדאן (London). It’s very much a living language, but increasingly disconnected from the geography of Central and Eastern Europe.

Still, that geography is embedded in Ashkenazi culture. Many of the places in these maps are written into the very names of today’s Ashkenazim. When Austro-Hungarian and Czarist Russian authorities compelled their Jewish subjects to take permanent surnames in the 18th and 19th centuries, one of the most common practices was to adopt the town or region where they lived, or where their families came from, as their last name. Yiddish names like Frankel (from Franconia), Epstein (from Eppstein), Gordon (from Grodno), Horowitz (from Hořovice), Shapiro (from Speyer), Schlesinger (from Silesia), and Wiener (from Vienna) all originated in this way.

For centuries, many Ashkenazim were forbidden from owning land in Europe. Consequently, many Jews throughout Europe led transient lives, constantly on the move from town to town. There’s no doubt that Jews in that region, at that time, were savvy geographers by necessity. These maps are a testament to that expertise.

Because everywhere they have lived, Yiddish-speakers have been a minority, and since the language has almost never had government recognition or backing, there is little standardization of Yiddish place names. Some Yiddish names, like ווארשע (Varshe – the capital of Poland) and ווילנע (Vilne – the capital of Lithuania) are well-established, but many others, especially shtetlekh (smaller towns), have suffered a worse fate. All too often, people either don’t know or pretend not to know that these places have their own Yiddish names.

In the important work of preserving Europe’s Jewish history and revitalizing Yiddish knowledge, these maps are indispensable.