Slavic

Until the Second World War, Eastern Europe was home to the largest Jewish civilization.  It was in the Polish lands and later the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Empires that the majority of the worlds’ Jews lived until the early twentieth century.  Until the twentieth century, Jews in Eastern Europe used Yiddish as their everyday language.  Many Jews had knowledge of local Slavic and non-Slavic languages spoken by the region’s diverse populations such as Polish, Russian, German, and Czech, and used these languages in their interactions with non-Jews.  By the early 1800s, some Jewish elites acquired the dominant non-Jewish languages, such as Russian or Polish, as their everyday language, a reflection of their education and social aspirations.  Local authorities also increased the pressure on Jews to use the state languages in education, socio-economic interactions, and cultural life.  Until the First World War, the majority of Jews in the region remained Yiddish-speakers although in some regions of the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian Empire, Jews adopted the local non-Jewish languages such as Czech and German, Polish and Russian; a trend that spread rapidly after the war with the expansion of public education.  By the late 1800s, Jewish writers and artists working in multiple languages reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity that was a characteristic of life in Eastern Europe until the Second World War and its aftermath.  As a result of recurring immigration and flight of Jews from Eastern Europe after 1945, Russian, Polish, and Czech-speaking Jewish societies now exist in Israel, Canada, the United States, and Germany.   

Slavic languages denote more than twenty languages spoken by people in Eastern Europe and Russia.  While there are linguistic similarities between the languages, the history and culture of Slavic speakers are very diverse.  At UT Austin, you can study the following Slavic languages: Czech, Polish, Russian, as well as Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian.   The Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies offers courses in all these languages from beginner to advanced levels.  Courses on the history, culture, and literature of the region often include materials on the region’s Jews including “Jewish Folklore,” “Introduction to Russian and East European Studies,” “War and Revolution in Russian Literature and Culture,” as well as the Russian history surveys (“History of Russia to 1917” and “History of Russia since 1917”).  Courses such as “Introduction to the Holocaust” cover the near total destruction of Eastern Europe’s Jewish societies during the Second World War.   

 For more on Jewish history and culture in the region, see: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

For more on contemporary Jewish life in Poland, see: Polin: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews

For a UT site on Jewish life in Eastern Europe (including resources at UT Austin), see: Explore East European Jewish History at UT