Who Cares About Standards?: Language Standardizers Fight for a Secure Jewish Future in the Twentieth Century

Standards are an agreed upon, consensus-based way of doing things, the foundation of all aspects of society. I will concentrate on case studies of organizers of Yiddish language standards, who lived between 1864 and 2007, and their parallel dedication to the fight for Jewish national autonomy and cultural continuity for east European Jewry. Using contemporary biomedical research standards as a model, I will contrast the use of standards and the pushback against the use of standards, to understand the risks encountered when agreed upon standards are ignored. The implications reveal conflicts between rugged individualism and concern for the communal good. The Yiddish language planners: Nosn Birnboym, Ber Borokhov, Elye Spivak, Uriel Vaynraykh, and Mordkhe Shekhter advocated for the establishment and observance of standards of usage, most commonly involving orthography and the lexicon. Yet they also fought for a secure future for the Jewish people, encompassing leadership in disparate endeavors that included political Zionism, establishment and administration of Jewish research institutions, educational planning for the continuity of pre-war culture after the Holocaust, and the founding of youth movements and small residential communities. This analysis that is based in twentieth century Jewish history dissects the symbol of order in language and culture and the predictability in usage. For some leaders, their political mobilization and planning were perceived as actions aimed at saving the Jewish people.