SOURCE: Goldsmith, Emmanuel. “Yiddishism and Judaism.” In Politics of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Literature, and Society, edited by Dov-Ber Kerler, pp. 11-22. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Goldsmith investigates the differences and similarities between Judaism and Yiddish culture and language.

Ever since the Emancipation and the Enlightenment, there seems to be no end to the making of definitions of Judaism. Although Aristotle spoke of a definition as “a sentence signifying what a thing is”, Samuel Butler was probably more to the point when he described a definition as “the enclosing of a wilderness of ideas within a world of words”. Nevertheless, in a paper with a title such as this, there is no choice but to begin with a definition of terms.

Judaism has been defined by Mordecai M. Kaplan (1964: 10) as “the ongoing life of a people intent upon keeping alive for the highest...