In a recent conversation with Prof. Emeritus Jan Schwarz of Yiddish Studies at Lund University in southern Sweden, we spoke about something many people do not realize: Sweden is the only European country where Yiddish has official status.
In 1999, Sweden recognized Yiddish as one of five national minority languages. The decision was more than symbolic. It meant that the language of Yiddish literature, theater, journalism, and everyday Jewish life would be protected, studied, and supported.
For those who associate Yiddish primarily with Eastern Europe, Sweden might seem an unlikely place for such a commitment. After all, the historic centers of Yiddish culture were cities like Vilnius, Warsaw, Lublin, and Łódź. These were the great capitals of what scholars sometimes call Yiddishland – a cultural world that stretched across Eastern Europe and produced an extraordinary body of literature, theater, and intellectual life.
Yet history has its own way of rearranging the map.
Today, some of the most important work to preserve and study specific cultures is taking place in places far removed from their original geography. One of those places is Lund in Southern Sweden.
At Lund University, Yiddish is not treated simply as a language course. It is approached as the key to understanding a cultural civilization. Students study the language itself, but they also explore Yiddish literature, modern Jewish thought, theater, film, and the history of Jewish publishing. And publishing is an essential part of the story.
Yiddish culture was, above all, a culture of the written word. Newspapers circulated, and writers debated ideas in essays and journals. Poets, novelists, and playwrights gave voice to the imagination and anxieties of Jewish life. The world of Yiddish publishing connected communities from Vilnius to Warsaw, and from Odessa to Berlin and New York.
Scholars at Lund continue to explore this literary universe. Through research, editing, translation, and publication, they bring forgotten works back into circulation and make Yiddish literature accessible to new generations of readers and students.
For many people, the story of Yiddish is told mainly through loss – through the destruction of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. That tragedy is part of the story, but it is not the whole story.
Yiddish was, and remains, a language of creativity, humor, argument, and imagination. It was the language in which millions of Jews wrote novels, staged plays, published newspapers, and debated the future of Jewish life.
What is remarkable is that this cultural world continues to live on in lecture halls, libraries, and research seminars at Lund University, and the language of Yiddishland is still being studied and rediscovered.
(Professor Jan Schwarz)
For those interested in encountering this cultural world firsthand, Professor Jan Schwarz will lead a unique program that celebrates Yiddishland, as expressed in language and historic places in Lithuania, Poland, and, yes, Sweden. Journey through Yiddishland is not a tour of tragedy, but of creativity – an encounter with the locations where Yiddish literature and other artworks in multiple media were created. From its origins in Poland and Lithuania, the Yiddish language and culture traveled across borders and generations from the past to the present. Here, now, Yiddishland it is still alive – in Yiddishlund.