I would like to hear an expert opinion from you. I am aware that Hebrew has ceased being a vernacular language for nearly 2000 years and its usage is limited as liturgical language of Jewish religion as well as some Jewish philosophical works. When the language is revived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is an archaic language lacking modern and contemporary words, terms and phrases. Eliezer ben Yehuda reinvented new words from archaic Hebrew terms and gives new meanings to them. He also adopted loanwords from existing Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic into Hebrew vocabulary. According to Ghilad Zuckerman, the modern Hebrew is actually a hybrid language with Hebrew as the core and blends with various languages spoken by Jewish communities. He argues that the modern Hebrew should be renamed as Israeli language rather. According to him, the language is strongly influenced by European Jewish languages especially Yiddish rather than the Semitic family of languages. He even argued that had the proponents of Hebrew revival are Middle Eastern Jews who speak Arabic and Aramaic, the modern Hebrew will be a totally different language being more Semitic than the current Hebrew language. What do you think? Is Modern Hebrew strongly influenced by Yiddish rather than Semitic family of languages?

Would you be interested in a Yiddish speaking part in our podcast

אני אישית מדבר עברית מלידה אבל זה נורא כיף לראות מישהו שבאמת טרח ללמוד את השפה הקשה הזאת (שדי קרובה ללבי) ועוד עברית תנכית וארמית!

Hebrew is extinct & white ain't Semite.

Don’t visits them at all they are scam artist I paid $130 for their course and I didn’t learn not one thing at all.

a friend of mine visited NYC last year and told me she was surprised to hear a weird german dialect so often in the streets only to realise a moment later she was in NYC and this was Yiddish, ha.

Yiddish is basically Old German. Like from the Middle Ages.

That was the Russian dialect, where "u" is "u" and "a" (Not "ä") is "a". In the Polish dialect of Yiddish, "u" is "i" (Not ü) and "a" is "u"! (not ü)

Wario Toad 32 it's high German.

It sounds a lot like Pennsylvania Dutch to me. :-)

Actually, before ww2 only 15% out of about 3 300 000 Jews in Poland used to speak Polish. That was very closed society. Very often they had their own separated area, where the Poles didn't come (there was no purpose, it wasn't racism). In Poland many people miss this oryginal jewish culture and Yiddish spoken on the streets.

@Nicholas Ennos Nonsense. Sorb is a Slavic language.

Here in Hungary they use lots of Yiddish often without knowing it. I found the same in Hamburg.

@Jakub Bończak I know this is a little random, but my paternal grandfather was Polish and our coat of arms (herb) is called Bończa. From my understanding families with the same coat of arms (ród) participated in many activities together and even rode into battle together. I couldn't help but notice that your surname is very similar to my coat of arms... does your family have this coat of arms as well? Maybe our ancestors rode into battle side by side, or maybe your family is just from a village called Bończa or maybe its just a coincidence but an interesting anecdote nonetheless.

@Jakub Bończak Very interesting. My Grandfather was born in Warsaw and his mother was born in China (Harbin) while his father was born in modern Belarus (Gomel, they called it Russia) while his grandfathers were working on the Trans-Siberian railway. However all four of his grandparents were born in what was then the Łomża Gubernia, more specifically in the vicinity of the towns of Ostrów Mazowiecka and Maków Mazowiecki. Some branches of the family may have been wealthy, but any wealth they did have was taken in the January 1863 Uprising. It's interesting that you mention the Rawicz coat of arms because my grandfather's grandmother had this coat of arms (I know the coats of arms of each of my grandfathers four grandparents but can goo no further than that). My family has a signet ring that was given to my father by my great-grandfather on a visit to Poland. My great grandfather had it in his childhood (~1900) in Russia, possibly to prove or emphasize his noble heritage while at boarding school. Anyways, the ring is Gold with a very intricate carving of the Bończa coat of arms in a red stone. My grandfather didn't know how old it is, perhaps it was made c.1900 for his father or possibly it is much older. Do you know of other families who have such rings? Were they used to seal letters with wax? I am also wondering if there is somewhere I can take the ring (once this situation with Covid-19 has improved) to get an estimate of how old it is and possibly where it was made.

+Omri Levin und

+Wim V (ilGatoNero) gleich

Wim V​ you missed my point... the bad German was on purpose

+Omri Levin I think this is because Yiddish people were up until some 100 years ago, mostly functionally illiterate in the Latin script. Those who knew how to read could not read using the script, and when they adopted it, it was using English phonetics instead of German phonetics.

+GABE I wish that I could agree with you, but the Yiddish language has been written and published since at least the 16th century (look up the hugely popular Yiddish classic 'Tseno Ureno' and it's history). The orthography of Yiddish hasn't changed very much in the last 3 to 4 centuries, and it's much, much closer to German phonetics than it is to English phonetics.

It's the same deal. A form of ancient Spanish, can communicate to some extent with modern Spanish, cannot communicate at all with Hebrew.

To a large extent, actually. Spanish people can understand Ladino very well and vice versa.

I'm probably a rather uncommon bird; I'm Jewish, and speak both Spanish and German as my native languages. (I'm Chilean, Austrian parents). While Ladino and Sapnish speaking people understand each other perfectly, Understanding Yiddish by ear, isn't that easy. I understand only half of it. But reading it -albeit slowly- in its Hebrew script, allows me to understand a lot more, maybe 80%. Finally, on a subjective note, Ladino is so hearwarmingly beautiful for a Spanish speaker. Generally, Yiddish doesn't sound so beautiful to German speaking Jews, or German speaking people in general. Thank you so much to Paul and all of you. I really LOVE LANGUAGES AND CULTURES.

You should try listening to Galitzianer Yiddish. The pronunciation is much closer to German than the YIVO standard Litvak Yiddish.

It sounds like Spanish actually.

@@applejuice9468 what the fuck?!?

@@applejuice9468 LMFFAOOO

Nice! My dad speaks Hebrew and is learning Yiddish with me on duolingo.

+Nameless User Hi N.U. Yeah, I know an older Israeli woman who speaks Yiddish (she learned it from her parents) and I remember her telling me that she could easily get by when she was in Germany. I don`t speak Yiddish myself but I`ve examined the two languages together on paper and I see how similar they are.

+Langfocus +Nameless User Yiddish sounds like a very weird dialect of Dutch.

WARIO TOAD 32 Well, Dutch and German are related, so that's not too surprising.

+Nameless User I am a native Hebrew speaker and it sounds the same to me lol It sounds like Hebrew with many German words thrown in and some Russian words

Omri Levin To me Yiddish sounds like Dutch or German with Arabic and Hebrew words mixed in.

I recommend you watching Shtisel, so you get a view on the 99.99% of Haredim that like being Haredim.

@@user-fi9ub6ry1g חחח תגובה משונה במקצת.

You don't know what you're talking about. Have you read some good Yiddish literature? How about Sholem Aleykhem's monologs? You'll understand very little. Ihre Äusserungen sind nicht wissenschaftlich begründet und sind unannehmbar. Sie haben keine Jiddischkenntnisse und ihre Eindrücke entsprechen nicht der Wirklichkeit.

כל הכבוד

Yiddish have so beautiful pronunciation. I like more than german

Can you gives us some examples used in every day life?!

מה אצה עושה שם אחי

Even the Hebrew what's spoken now is a total other thing than the old Hebrew

Very fascinating. German native speaker here. Can you read german texts, like for example Wikipedia articles? I can read yiddish and dutch wikipedia articles and understand most of what is written there. And have you ever tried reading medieval german texts? Like strophes from Wolfram von Eschenbachs "Parzival" or from the "Nibelungenlied" in mittelhochdeutsch original? Mittelhochdeutsch should be the language most closest related to modern yiddish at all, so I wonder how it is the other way aroung. :)

@@swensandor But Yiddish is Written in hebrew letters and German is latin letters. How could he read German?

@@Some_Jihadi_Warrior-me1rz he wrote his comment in Latin script. So he might can also read Latin script

Y:id,Dish ⚽️👀🤚, PUTin PUT in, I'm not sure why I'm here right now but we all get to say stuff, Goodbye hello

זה כמו גרמנית ואסור לנו ללמד את זה זה לא שפה יהודית

And Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) spoken by the Sephardic Jews.

Ladino is very common in the Turkish Jewish communities

+Murray Aronson And Shaudit (like a mix of Medieval French and Hebrew). The last speaker died in the 70's.

Yes I'm aware of that being Judeo-Provencal, not exactly French. And the last speaker of it or at least knew it, was a writer by the name of Armand Lunel.

Shame what happened to it... Wait, do you think Rashi spoke it?

In addition, we often use "Massl" (luck) in Bavarian-Austrian dialect.

I noticed that too.....in Ulpon. they discussed Mishpoke mishpacha, and meshugana meshugge.

Mischpoke? Is that a dialectal form of Missgesprochen? ;)

Ganove is another one.

Mischpoke = Sippe (relatives/ family / lineage)

Although most of Yiddish is Germanic, there are some words of Slavic origin, for example 'prost' meaning low or uncultured appears to come from the Russian 'prostoi' meaning simple.

"Prost" means "cheers" in German.

Is Dutch language similar to German language I always thought it was. I am getting ready to try to learn Hebrew. I said I never would, but I plan to spend about two hours a day to self-teach myself. I only know English language.

Dutch and German are very similar, native Germans can understand 70% of (written) Dutch and 95% of the Dutchmen are fluent in German as well. It's sth. like Danish to Norwegian f.e.

bist a khosid? ikh ken oukh mame lushn

Native Germans can understand it quite well.

Geschleppeled gongy yagdeh schmultz

yes it is

A bit.

***** תודה חבר :)

+ForeverRepublic different region--Yiddish is associated with Ashkenazi and Ladino with the Sephardim (Spanish(

David Carson Yeah I know, I'm Jewish lol. I was just saying.

it has preserved the spanish pronunciation of the medieval times. For me as a spaniard it's easy to understand it and somehow funny also. I find it an unvaluable treasure. No matter how it's called (judeo-español, djudio, djudezmo or ladino) it should be preserved.

There was also a knaan language (judeoslavic) used in Poland and yavanit in Greece :)

Git far dir , zols di huben a groisse bruche vehatzluche , zei gezint poilishe froind

@@pischpilot Gut far dir, sollst du hoben a groisse ברכה והצלחה, sei gesunt poilishe froind

Wait, your surname is in Turkish?

+Daniel Torrealba Bullshit...

+RowDot it's not b.s., it's correct. many continue to speak yiddish and use hebrew only for religious practices.

+RowDot he is right, I remember walking by some Hasidic Jews when there was an event for them and I couldn't understand a thing they were saying, they believe that Hebrew is a language only to pray with and too holy to be used as a slang and daily.

+CORNCAKE80 +CORNCAKE80 That`s often the case, but there are some Hasidic Jews who speak Hebrew as a daily language too. And there are Hasidic Jews who speak Yiddish as their main language but *can* speak Hebrew too (not just read it and pray in it).

+RowDot Go to hasidic towns in New York. The street signs are all English/Yiddish bilingual.

There’s not much more to say about it than what I said in this video, though.

Actually the current standard spanish from Spain has a "th" sound and it's represented with a "Z". But by the time when jews were forced to leave Spain this sound didn't exist.

And the word beis became - by adding the southern German diminutive ending -(e)l - the word Beisl in Viennese German, meaning "pub". Cool how languages influence each other.

And a lot of Arabic influence!! Really a lot!

Hebrew accent is European. The early Israeli settlers accents became standard whereas a local Arab accent is closer to original Hebrew and there are a few sounds that are difficult for European speakers to make thus modern Hebrew has sound shifted to a European type of sounds.

I made it 6 years ago. I can’t change it now. But the music fades out after some intro comments.

I don’t mean to be kvetch - your information and presentations are marvelous. Thank you for all you do.

That's true, there were more Jews in Poland in the 19th/early 20th century than in Germany. I'm kind of surprised Yiddish is a Germanic language and not Slavic.

I'm a near-native speaker of Yiddish and I've never heard any family member of mine using that word.

It's interesting that it is not longer used, but I double checked and it turns out that it really was used, at least in the 80's it was. If you open this book: dovidkatz.net/dovid/PDFLinguistics/2-1987-Grammar-Yiddish.pdf at page 198, you'll find an example of this interrogative in the question "Are you coming tomorrow?". You can find other examples of POlish-Yiddish mutual influences in this article: culture.pl/en/article/how-much-polish-is-there-in-yiddish-and-how-much-yiddish-is-there-in-polish.. Where do you live? I know that Yiddish-speaking communities are rare and small these days. Are you from Israel?

corhydron111 Yes, I am. I'll have to read through these articles, though.

Only speakers of the Polish variety of Yiddish start a question with "tschi." Though I grew up hearing the Russian and Lithuanian dialects of Yiddish around me, I never heard this particle used in Yiddish until I moved to Israel.

+Bannicus Yes, that`s right. The Zionist movement sought to recreate Hebrew as the language of the Jews for the Jewish homeland. It`s not completely the same, of course. I have a couple of videos on Hebrew that explain it in more detail.

Langfocus Would that make it the only case of resurrecting a major language? As far as I'm aware, attempts in Wales, New Zealand, Australia and other places to even bring back *still existing* languages have been unsuccessful.

Bannicus Yes, I think so. I guess the Zionist movement was very motivated and organized, with a strong vision in mind of what they wanted to achieve. I think it takes that kind of big movement to resurrect a language.

+Bannicus What? Welsh is the primary language used in Wales. English is actively discouraged.

swingbeatnik7 I assumed he was thinking of Irish - which isn`t dead, but I think the efforts to keep it thriving have been lackluster from what I hear.

Well, if I do this topic again it will be at the expense of another topic. My current videos take weeks of hard work to make, so re-doing topics is not a decision to take lightly.

@@Langfocus the great takes time and everyone could get noticed, maybe if you compare German VS Yiddish.

I'm not saying Paul should (and I doubt he would) redo it, but this is probably the video that gets me wondering the most on how would he do it today.

Hi Marlene. I haven't made videos on those topics yet, but they sound like interesting ideas.

:-)

+Sardeth 42 it's kind of a dialect, but a dialect is a variation of a language that is spoken in a specific place... and the belarusian yiddish was spoken in the same place the jewish yiddish was spoken so it's not rly a dialect (formally)

Christian Belorussians spoke Yiddish? Interesting, never knew it.

tFighterPilot Well... It wasn't really Yiddish but a dialect of German that was pretty close to Yiddish (just without the Hebrew words)... They pretty much had to because it was forbidden to speak Belorussian in public and you could go to prison if you did, or even get executed if you were advertising it or you preached in Belorussian (though some spoke Polish but it was also kind of forbidden but not as much as the Belorussian language).

Absolutely nonsence/ I am from Belorussia/ The Belorussians never spoke Yiddish? because of high antidemitic level . Russian was the official language. But after revolution of 1917 there were 4 official languages -Belorussian, Russian, Polish and Yiddish. You can see it on the coat of arms of Belorussia between 1922 and 1941

The first time I hear something like this. My ancestors are Belorussian Jews. they spoke Yiddish inside their own community, Russian with the authorities, and Belorussians could always speak Belorussian. It was not encouraged, but I really have never heard that anyone was persecuted or executed for speaking the language. I never heard that it was actually forbidden to speak Belorussian in Belorus.

So interesting, the language is so multicultural 😊

+JOSE L. Zambrano That's for a different video sometime.

yes, please!

Ladino and Spanish seem even closer than Yiddish and German, I think.

It's basically Spanish with little different words and pronunciation closer to Italian or Portuguese.

Only after1700 uvular r became dominant over alveolar trill in most German speaking regions.

Well, about 85% of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish population (almost all of them Ashkenazi, obviously) were killed during the war and Hebrew was revived based on the Sephardic (Ibero-Spanish) dialect of the Jews living in Maghreb and the Middle East (the most notable difference being the prevalence of the "a" vowel sound in the latter, as opposed to "o" in Ashkenazi). Still, almost the entire elite of the State of Israel was and still is comprised of Ashkenazis themselves: the reason being that the Sephardic Jews, while generally faring better than the Muslims, didn't really outperform the local Christians the same way the Ashkenazis did in Europe. In terms of IQ, the "superior Jewish" stereotype really only holds true to the Ashkenazis, not the Sephardis or the Yemenites, not to mention those that came from Ethiopia. And yet they did allow for Yiddish to fall into disuse, despite talking it themselves. Hell, they were actually more likely to speak other European languages instead, such as Polish during the first Knesset meeting (they even used Polish as a sort of aviation code during the Six Day War to confuse the Egyptians). I guess it makes sense when you think about it though: most of the Holocaust-surviving Ashkenazis were secular Zionists, often with a strong communistic incline and dislike for the Jewish religion. Making Hebrew the official language of Israel would not only strengthen the national identity much more than the highly Europeanized Yiddish (and, probably not least importantly, very much influenced by the language of the people who almost wiped them out of the face of the earth) but also deal a significant blow to the hegemony of the Orthodox Jews, most of whom were coming from the Middle East rather than Europe. I guess I would have done the same, although I still think they could have retained the Yiddish-style vowel-marking for all words rather than just revert to the Old Hebrew in its entirety. It would also have made reading the ancient scriptures much harder, thus making it more difficult for the Orthodox to gain a wider appeal among younger generations. That was partly the reason why Mustafa Kemal of Turkey forced the Latin alphabet upon his nation: he didn't want the young to be able to read Arabic and thus hinder their sense of Turkish nationalism for the sake of sam sort of pan-Islamist sentiment.

yarpen26 thank you for your detailed and very interesting response! In my friend's case, her family was Orthodox coming from...Lithuania? I think?...so it's news to me that the majority of the Ashkenazi Jews coming from Europe would have been secular. Interesting. In my friend's case, she speaks Hebrew fluently but says she doesn't understand Yiddish at all.

@Nicholas Ennos I went to Georgia ( The country) a few years back and was blown away by the strong physical similarities , the music , the general mood and the type of food eaten there with the ashkenazi jews . It was very clear to me then that European Jews have their roots in the region bordering Turkey , Russia , Ukraine, Mongolia and they mixed themselves up with the slavic populations too and the middle eastern jews as well. Genetic studies has been proving that they are majoritarily of Central -Asian and European descent .Let's not forget that GPS traced nearly all Ashkenazy Jews to major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to four primeval villages whose names resemble “Ashkenaz:” İşkenaz (or Eşkenaz), Eşkenez (or Eşkens), Aşhanas, and Aschuz. More here : www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478715/

Despite the similarities ashkenazim are only about 10% Kazar genetically (extinct east European group). Yet many people claim they are "really" east European kazars. Primarily they came from male middle easterners marrying female Europeans. Some Greek or Italian but primarily west slavs such as the sorts (slavic people found in modern germany). The physical similarities between sorts and askenazim are obvious.

Sorbians or sorbs not sorts

+sharperguy I think it would be better to do it the other way around. Learn the Hebrew alphabet for Hebrew, and then as some extra fun practice you can try reading some Yiddish words. But the pronunciation of Yiddish might mess up your Hebrew reading, because Hebrew is based on a lot of word patterns that are very different in Yiddidh.

+sharperguy It's actually not that hard to learn the Hebrew alphabet anyway. I don't know German or Yiddish, but I know the Hebrew alphabet pretty well.

+sharperguy You've hit on a complicated point! Hebrew words used in Yiddish are pronounced according to the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, which is very different from the Sephardi-based Israeli pronunciation. Yet they are not re-spelt according to Yiddish rules, which means that the very same word, e.g. שבת (Sabbath) comes out as 'shábes' in Yiddish but 'shabbát' in Hebrew.

+Michael F Also Yiddish uses the Hebrew letters as an actual alphabet, i.e vowels are represented (אַ for a, אָ for o, ע for e, י for i, etc) whereas in Hebrew these are all consonants ( although sometimes in modern Hebrew some may be used as vowels). So for instance in Hebrew the word "television" is טלוויזיה which is sort of like "tlvizih" but pronounced "televizia"whereas in Yiddish it's טעלעוויזיע i.e written and pronounced "televizie". Don't know if I'm making any sense, but basically they use the alphabet in very different ways.

But in the polish dialect, SHABBOS becomes SHUBBIHS (I'm not joking)

Yiddish and Swiss German have a lot of similarities since they both evolved from High German

+edydon I think that`s partly true, except that it wasn`t constructed (not in the way that Esperanto was constructed, or Modern Hebrew was sort of reconstructed). They just adopted a local form of German but used it in isolated Jewish communities so it developed on its own path.

The idea came in later, and is still current in some ultra-Orthodox circles, that Hebrew is too holy for ev everyday use.

Because the Jews were forced away from Italy around 1492, many went to Germany, and it became natural for them to learn a least a language that could be understood in the German ghetto they were forced too. I believe that was the first ghetto in history. It may have actually been in Venice.

@@bumpriderolling9158 Jews lived on the Rhine in Roman times. They migrated to many towns in Germany. They were irreplaceable for international trade and financial administration and were closely connected to bishops and the emperior. As long as Germans were just superficial Christian there were no persecutions. The start of persecutions during the crusades indicates the progress of Christianization.

@@bumpriderolling9158 Jews lived on the Rhine in Roman times. They migrated to many towns in Germany. They were irreplaceable for international trade and financial administration and were closely connected to bishops and the emperior. As long as Germans were just superficial Christian there were no persecutions. The start of persecutions during the crusades indicates the progress of Christianization.

Was your mother in Israel or America?

yeah we need it

azman abas Aramaic was Jesu's language

Mikel Arana Etxarri z

Aramaic it is actually closer to Hebrew. they are both from the Northwest Semitic group. Arabic came from the Southern Semitic language group.

R. Vered Yes Arabic is very close to Hebrew. Very many words are exactly alike.

You can't be Arab jew, that's why we have Isreal.

@@lostboy4207 I mean that my family are Jews from Egypt (and before that from Iraq)... They call us "Arab Jews" or "Oriental Jews". I didn't invent the names. Israel has nothing to do with it. No offense, but read up on some history and you'll understand. ✌

F*cking leftist, if you love Arabs so much, go to Egypt and see what are they gonna do to you.

@@lostboy4207 I think you must be confused. You didn't understand what I wrote at all.

@Khaver 25 אדאנק! 😉 צו דיר אויך. Yes, I guess it might sound like an oxymoron, but "Sefaradim" or "Mizrahiyim" make up a good portion of world Jewry, and I'm one of them. 😉👍

Update? All three languages are different. They are written in Hebrew script, but the letters do not have the same value. Both Yiddish and Ladino might use the same Hebrew word for an item. For instance the Hebrew word for bread Lekhem might be used in both Hebrew and Ladino, but brot would also be used in Yiddish and pan also used in Ladino.

Mathematech Thank you for your comments but give me chance to let you know the reasons behind not able to pronounce these typical Semitic letters details as follow : When the Ashkenazim revived the language as they were the pioneers no doubt and they should be appreciated for their accomplishment but in the other hand they destroyed the spirit of the language as they Germanized it which means they changed many typical pure Semitic letters to sound like their German or Yiddish language ( Yiddish derived from German ) as they were/are unable to pronounce them so they shifted from east to west and I will give you some examples : 1- The letter ח Hhet converted to German CH ( KH ) 2- The letter ט Ttet converted to normal T 3- The letter ע A"yen converted to sound like A 4- The letter צ Ssadi converted to German Z ( TS ) 5- The letter ק Qof converted to sound like K 6- The letter ר Resh converted to German R ( GH ) 7- The letter ו Waw converted to German W ( V ) they did not change all these letters sound by bad intention but because these pure Semitic letters were/are so heavy on their tongues, then Mizrahim or eastern Jews followed them step by step as the Ashkenazim were/are the founders / leaders of the new state and they are who run the state departments, schools, educational institutes and media like TVs so their broken accent prevailed . This is the fact.

+Amis7 I had to look it up, but it seems that both languages have the same word (in Yiddish it`s 'bis' or 'bisn'. I don`t think it comes from Yiddish though. My understanding is that Yiddish draws from mostly German and some Hebrew vocabulary (and 'bis' is not Hebrew). I don`t know if there are native Yiddish words that have entered German.

Langfocus Sometimes we say "n` bisn" aswell which kind of means the same i guess

+Langfocus there are. Schmusen = kissing.

Stultum Stulto Oh really! Interesting. In English we sometimes say "smooch" for kiss. It must be related. Some Yiddish words entered North American English because of the cultural influence of New York City, where there used to be a lot of Yiddish speakers.

+Langfocus I think Schmusen might be related to Smooch in a "regular" way. Compare for example english Snow to german Schnee. The S->Sch is a prominent soundchange in high german (also Stone/Stein, Spew/Speuen, with the st/sp in german pronounced as sht/shp)

Jorrit Bekkema mokom or makom means place

+Orkar Isber (Estar) If you can easily communicate with Swiss Germans, you can communicate easily with Yiddish speakers.

+GABE I'd even go so far to say that it's easier to understand the Yiddish dialect than the Swiss one

Wiki says Yiddish is High German. Even closer than Dutch or Swiss.

what is that??

He said Torah but Torah is just the first five books in the Old Testament. The correct word is Tanakh which is the whole Old Testament which was written in Hebrew