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‘Faust’ author Goethe’s fascination with Yiddish
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is usually remembered as a towering figure of European culture: poet, playwright, scientist, and all-around genius of the Enlightenment.
His drama Faust opens with a scene that echoes the Book of Job, where God makes a wager with the devil over whether a good man can be led astray. What far fewer people know is that Goethe’s connection to the Bible was not just literary. He actually learned Hebrew so he could read it in the original — and his path to Hebrew ran straight through Yiddish.
Goethe was born in 1749 in Frankfurt am Main into a well-to-do Christian family. Frankfurt was also home to a densely packed Jewish quarter, the Judengasse (German for “the Jewish street”). As a boy, he ventured there, feeling both nervous and curious. In his autobiography, Poetry and Truth, published in 1833, he recalled what it was like for a German boy to step into a crowded world of people who dressed differently and spoke a strange-sounding German he called Judendeutsch (Jewish German).
But instead of fear or disdain, what stayed with him was fascination. He remembered friendly people and beautiful girls, and he was struck by the sense that the Jews carried ancient history with them into everyday life. They were, he wrote, “the chosen people of God … walking around in memory of the earliest times.” Even their stubborn attachment to tradition, he felt, deserved respect.
Goethe wanted to see more. He described how he insisted on visiting Jewish schools, attending a circumcision and a wedding, and getting a glimpse of Sukkot. Everywhere, he recalled, he was welcomed, entertained, and invited back. For an 18th-century German boy, this kind of contact with Jewish life was unusual — and it clearly made a lasting impression.
At home, Goethe was buried in languages. His father hired tutors to teach him Latin, Greek, English, French and Italian. Goethe learned quickly but soon grew bored with endless grammar drills. So he did what any restless young writer might do; he turned language learning into a game.
He invented a novel made up of letters exchanged by seven siblings scattered across Europe. Each sibling wrote in a different language: A music historian in Rome wrote in Italian, a Hamburg businessman in English, while a theology student wrote Latin and Greek. The youngest sibling stayed home and wrote in Yiddish. The effect, Goethe later suggested, was both amusing and confusing for the other characters.
That detail is telling. Goethe treated Yiddish as something playful and odd, a kind of Jewish-flavored German. But he knew it well enough to use it creatively.
In his autobiography, he describes the seven-language novel but doesn’t give it a title. We can guess, though, that his Yiddish was the Western Yiddish spoken by Frankfurt Jews at that time. A sentence like ikh vil kaafen flaash (“I want to buy meat”) would have sounded close to the local German dialect, but not quite the same.
Goethe soon realized that if he wanted to understand Yiddish properly, he would have to learn Hebrew. His father arranged a tutor, and young Goethe plunged into a whole new alphabet. Although the location of his childhood notebooks are unknown, two of its pages are located online. On them, he carefully writes out the Hebrew letters, their names, sounds and even their numerical values. His notebook contains reminders to himself that Hebrew words are built from three-letter roots and urges himself to practice again and again so the forms would stick in his memory.
It wasn’t easy. Goethe later wrote that he got used to reading from right to left and identifying the letters, but was confused by all the dots and dashes — the vowel points, that seemed to complicate things even further. Still, he pushed on. He learned to read the Hebrew Bible and even tried his hand at writing a German epic based on stories from Genesis.
His interest in Yiddish didn’t disappear with childhood. When he was 17, Goethe apparently wrote a Purim play in Judendeutsch, written in Hebrew letters, complete with a translation into High German. Years later, he translated King Solomon’s Song of Songs into German. The Bible became a lifelong companion — not just as literature, but as a moral guide. “I loved and valued the Bible,” he wrote, “and owed my moral education almost entirely to it.”
As Goethe grew older, his ideas expanded in many directions. Influenced by the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, as well as Persian, Sufi and Buddhist writings, he developed a broad, inclusive worldview. He dreamed of something he called Weltliteratur — world literature — a shared cultural space where the works of all peoples could speak to one another.
Near the end of his life, Goethe said that the age of world literature had arrived, and that everyone should help bring it about. Seen this way, his childhood journey — from the Judengasse, through Yiddish, to Hebrew — was more than a youthful curiosity. It was an early step toward a vision in which cultures, languages and traditions are not sealed off from one another, but connected.
For Forward readers, there is something especially satisfying in this story. Yiddish appears here not as a joke or a dead-end dialect, but as a bridge — linking everyday Jewish life to the Bible, and even carrying one of Europe’s greatest writers toward a deeper engagement with Jewish tradition and, ultimately, with the idea of world culture itself.
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Lawmakers seek 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship to protect prayer goers from protests
(JTA) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a federal legislation Thursday in the House and Senate aimed at protecting houses of worship from disruptive demonstrations, following a series of protests outside of synagogues this year.
The Right to Worship Act was introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, alongside Reps. Brad Knott, a North Carolina Republican, and Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat. It would establish a 100-foot “buffer zone” around houses of worship during religious services — mirroring similar legislation recently enacted in New York.
“The First Amendment guarantees every American the right to freely exercise their faith, and Congress has a duty to ensure that guarantee is met,” Cruz said in a statement Thursday.
The legislation would also establish civil penalties for offenders and provide pathways for individuals, including state attorneys, to seek court orders and damages in federal court. While the legislation would target protesters who knowingly disrupt scheduled religious services, houses of worship would not be required to make their schedules public.
The bill’s sponsors say the measure is aimed at conduct rather than the content of protesters’ speech.
“No one should have to push through a hostile crowd or shout over a bullhorn in an attempt to pray,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which helped lawmakers draft the legislation.
It’s the latest attempt at passing federal legislation aimed at insulating houses of worship from protest, following Suozzi’s “SACRED Act” legislation, a similar bill he introduced in April but which has not progressed in the House.
Those efforts have now been joined by Slotkin, who is Jewish, and Cruz, who has often taken aim at antisemitism within the Republican coalition over the past year.
“Exercising your right to worship should not require you to exhibit particular courage as you enter your synagogue, church, mosque, temple, mandir, or gurdwara,” Suozzi said in a statement.
The New York City Council passed a local buffer zone bill in March following a series of pro-Palestinian protests outside of synagogues that hosted Israeli real estate expos. While Jewish groups and leaders heavily advocated for the measure, it also faced opposition from civil rights leaders who said it would have a chilling effect on First Amendment protections.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Over 95% of Canadian Jewish university students report exposure to antisemitism
(JTA) — Nearly all Jewish students surveyed on Canadian university campuses said they have experienced or witnessed antisemitism, according to a new government-commissioned report.
The survey from the Department of Canadian Heritage found that 95.7% of Jewish students said they were exposed to antisemitism, with 70% saying their university did not take antisemitism seriously and 22% reporting physical violence against Jews.
“Antisemitism on Canadian campuses is neither isolated nor episodic,” said Jack Jedwab, the report’s main author, at a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday. “It can reasonably be described as systemic.”
The surveyed students anonymously detailed rhetoric, discriminatory treatment, vandalism, intimidation and physical attacks from their classmates as well as professors and administrators. Some 45% said they experienced Holocaust denial or distortion often or sometimes, and 65% said they encountered it “at least rarely.”
One respondent said they had witnessed a friend who wears a kippah being chased out of a school building by a group of students who shouted, “There is a Jew … let’s get him.”
Another student described a professor writing that “we need to kill all Zionists, that she had worked with them and saw how evil they were.” Students also said they were pressured by peers and professors to give their opinions on Israel because they were openly Jewish.
Some 36% of respondents complained about course content or classroom discussions that “they experienced as antisemitic or biased,” while 34% said “a professor introduced Jews, Judaism, Israel, or Zionism when unrelated to the course subject.”
The survey, out Wednesday as part of a report titled Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences, included about 900 Jewish students from schools across Canada. It was originally conducted for the government’s special envoy on antisemitism, a role that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration dissolved alongside an Islamophobia envoy earlier this year.
Carney replaced those offices with a new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, which he announced in June after saying that the country was “failing Jewish Canadians.” The new council was introduced as a push to unify the government’s approach toward combating systemic prejudice, but some Jewish groups decried the elimination of distinct envoys.
Pressure has mounted on Carney’s administration to stem the tide of antisemitic attacks in Canada since 2023, including gunfire at Jewish schools and synagogues and attacks on Jewish businesses and community centers.
On the same day the report was released, an Oklahoma-based organization called Jewish Tulsa made news for urging President Donald Trump’s administration to offer refugee status to Jewish Canadians.
“With the urgency around the challenges and the inaction we see in Canada, an asylum pathway makes sense,” Joe Roberts, who leads the conservative think tank, told The Canadian Press. He said that his family moved from Ontario to Tulsa after witnessing antisemitic graffiti in his neighborhood.
Martha Piper, former president of the University of British Columbia, said the campus antisemitism report revealed “a shocking presence of campus antisemitism throughout this country along with a troubling institutional failure to respond.”
“The results suggest a university culture that is not welcoming to Jewish students and systemically tries to exclude and vilify them,” said Piper.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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British Conservatives face backlash for nominating a former neo-Nazi for local office
(JTA) — LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party has defended its decision to endorse a former neo-Nazi activist as a candidate in next year’s local elections despite his imprisonment for crimes including racially aggravated harassment of Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the candidate, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, had demonstrated rehabilitation through his work in countering extremism. Berger, who was prominent in the last decade for her many battles against antisemitism on the right and in her own party, said in a statement that Badendoch “got this very, very wrong.”
“This case still haunts me,” Berger, who is now a peer in the House of Lords, posted on X on Tuesday afternoon. “I feel a bit sick reading well known commentators debate his selection today and say that ‘these are precisely the people we need in public office’.”
Bonehill-Paine, 33, was imprisoned for more than two years after being convicted of multiple crimes. Bonehill-Paine had called himself “a proud antisemite” while planning a 2015 rally that aimed to undo the “Jewification of Great Britain.”
Bonehill-Paine will run for the Crewkerne South seat on Somerset Council in southwest England in May 2027, less than a decade after his release from prison in 2018. His incarceration came after he was prosecuted for sharing what a judge described as “vile” antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi demonstration, as well as for racially aggravated harassment after publishing a series of antisemitic blog posts targeting Berger.
Among other slurs, he referred to Berger as an “evil money-grabber,” depicted her as a rodent and said the number of Jewish Labour MPs was “a problem.”
According to the Guardian, Bonehill-Paine said the Conservative Party and his local branch were aware of his past before selecting him. He told the Guardian that since his release from prison he has spoken publicly against antisemitism and extremism and has completed government-backed radicalization and counter-extremism programs.
The Conservative Campaign Headquarters responded to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment by relaying Badendoch’s remarks to reporters in Surrey on Tuesday morning.
“I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis,” said Badenoch, who was raised in Nigeria and who has become an outspoken critic of rising antisemitism in Britain. “Josh is someone who actually has been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and on countering extremism.”
She acknowledged Bonehill-Paine’s conviction but said he has “shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously.”
She added that he is “actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities and this is what I want to see.”
The backlash from Jewish organizations has been swift . Board of Deputies of British Jews Vice President Karen Newman stated, “It beggars belief that any party would select as a candidate a multiply convicted felon and the founder of a far-right group called National British Resistance.”
She also noted that the board had contacted the Conservative Party “to set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes.”
The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council put out a separate joint statement saying they had declined the Conservative Party’s invitation to meet with Bonehill-Paine, stating that his “crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions.”
They added, “Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a major political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration.”
Both organizations said they had agreed to meet with members of the party “to discuss their decision-making processes and to urge them to rescind this decision.”
The Jewish Labour Movement called the decision “truly appalling,” saying that Bonehill-Paine’s record, and particularly his attacks on Berger, should have disqualified him from elected office. “This is a former Neo-Nazi who was sent to prison for racially abusing a Jewish politician,” the group said.
Berger represented Liverpool Wavertree from 2010 until 2019 and entered the House of Lords last year. During her tenure she received constant antisemitic abuse, both online and in person, and was the target of several criminal incidents involving extremist harassment.
Bonehill-Paine did not respond to JTA’s requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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