Do mostly all practicing Jewish families know how to speak Yiddish?
There are several topics you bring up about Jews being bi-lingual. First, I was raised with one type of Hebrew and now all the Synagogues use the modern Hebrew of Israel. Second, in every Synagogue and Temple in the US is an Israeli flag. Third, I am an American who happens to be Jewish and refuse to identify himself as a Jewish-American. Fourth, Yiddish is rarely spoken out of the New York City metro area. I called the Rosetta Stone people about doing a course in Yiddish. They wanted me to finance it and find the people who spoke it. My grandfather and grandmother (paternal) came here from Galica in the 1880-1890s and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, German and a little Hungarian and Romanian. Once here the family immediately learned English in order to gain access to the streets of Gold that they heard about. My mother’s side of the family sold dock space to the Mayflower when it landed at Plymouth Rock. They have been here so long we cannot trace when they arrived in America.
