Yekke
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Template:DMCA A Yekke (also Jecke, Jekke[a]) is a humorous, mildly derogatory[1] reference to a German-speaking Jew in Israel.[2] In Germany, they were contrasted with their Eastern European counterparts, the Ostjuden.
Etymology
There are several suggestions on the etymology of the word, all of them being inconclusive.[3][1] In the older Yiddish dictionaries the word was translated as "German", but this meaning was not preserved, neither in Yiddish, nor Hebrew.[1] The word is productive in Yiddish and when borrowed into Hebrew it had become productive there as well, accepting Hebrew patterns of word formation. For example, in Yiddish the feminine for is yekete, feminine plural: yeketes, while in Hebrew it is yekit and yekiot, respectively.[1]
Demography and history
The wave of immigration to British Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s known as the Fifth Aliyah had a large proportion of Yekkes, around 25% (55,000 immigrants). Many of them settled in the vicinity of Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv, leading to the nickname "Ben Yehuda Strasse". Their struggle to master Hebrew produced a dialect known as "Yekkish" (Template:Langx, 'yekish'). The Ben Yehuda Strasse Dictionary: A Dictionary of Spoken Yekkish in the Land of Israel, published in 2012, documents this language.[2]
Some 60,000 German-speaking Jews immigrated to Israel in this wave, and they and their descendants made profound contributions to Israeli culture and society. Too, their stereotypical Middle European formality, given the context of rough-hewn sabra culture, readily made the yekke a long-standing punchline, the omnibus cliché being that they were "overly formal, somewhat uppity, meticulous to the extreme, and famously punctual". The cohort was featured at the Hecht Museum in December 2025.[4]
A significant community escaped Frankfurt after Kristallnacht, and relocated to the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, where they still have a synagogue, Khal Adath Jeshurun, which punctiliously adheres to the Yekkish liturgical text, rituals, and melodies.[5]
Further reading
- Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Weinbaum, Laurence; McPherson, Colin (2000). "No Milk and No Honey: The Yekkes and the Ostjuden". Jewish Quarterly. 47 (3): 25–30. doi:10.1080/0449010X.2000.10705191 (inactive 12 July 2025).
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
See also
Notes
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- ^ In German, 'Jecke' is pronounced basically in the same way as English 'Yekke'
References
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- ^ a b c d Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Gold, David L. (1981). "The Etymology of Yiddish Yeke". Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik (in Deutsch). 48 (1). Franz Steiner Verlag: 57–59. JSTOR 40502725.
- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Aderet, Ofer (7 September 2012). "Take a Biss of This Book!". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 17 May 2019. Retrieved 1 October 2019. - A review of the book The Ben Yehuda Strasse Dictionary by Devorah Haberfeld
- ^ Gideon Greif, "Die Jeckes", In: Hermann Zabel (ed.): Stimmen aus Jerusalem: zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur in Palästina – Israel, LIT-Verlag, Berlin. 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9749-4, pp. 59–83
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."No Longer the Butt of Jokes: New Museum in Haifa Celebrates Prim and Proper Yekke Culture - Art & Culture".
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Lowenstein, Steven M. (1989). Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933–1983, Its structure and Culture. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0814323854.
External links
- Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz
- The American Yekkes (Yisrael Kashkin, 2016)
- K'hal Adas Yeshurun of Jerusalem Nusach Project
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