The Hasidic Sermon and Yiddish

• In Event: Hasidim as Exceptions and the Exceptionality of Yiddish

Abstract

Several researchers, such as Zeev Gries, Moshe Rosman, Arthur Green and others, have pointed out the gap between the language in which Hasidic sermons were orally delivered – in Yiddish, and the language in which they were later written – in Hebrew. Research on Hasidic sermons, has until now been mainly based on Hebrew translations and secondary sources. These often differ quite substantially, from the authentic primary Yiddish sources. These differences can add to and perhaps even change our understanding of the sermon as actually delivered. Furthermore, most of the research on Hasidic thought and philosophy is based solely on Hebrew texts, which are a translation and at least one step away from the original.
I propose, to attempt in this lecture, to bridge this gap between the oral sermon and the textual sermon, by examining manuscripts (which have not been studied so far), which are written records of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter's (The Ger Rebbe 1847–1905) sermons in Yiddish.
R. Alter led the Ger Hasidic community in Poland for nearly thirty-five years. He delivered many sermons which have been preserved for us, dated and carefully written down in Hebrew by R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib himself titled Sefat Emet (lit. “Language of Truth”), and this work quickly became one of the great classics of Hasidic literature.
In parallel to this, I have found several unknown Yiddish manuscripts, which are transcriptions of the Sfat Emet made by his Hasidic listeners, which reflect the Yiddish oral presentation as it was heard by them. It is very interesting to compare them to the Hebrew, and see how they preserve the "leibedike Shprach" (living language) of the oral sermon and to research the contribution of the Yiddish to the philosophical understanding of the sermon.
This lecture will prove that the analysis of Hasidic thought needs to rely on primary Yiddish sources and not just secondary Hebrew translations. I believe that this research will break new ground in showing the importance of Yiddish for Jewish-Thought studies and will provide philological tools for using Yiddish as a main resource for analyzing Hasidic Material.

author

• Daniel Reiser, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem