Religion & Peace

For many Jewish college students, a centuries-old language is opening new avenues for connection. Young Jewish Americans are turning to Yiddish to explore their heritage and identity on their own terms. This shift gives university chaplains a window into how students want to stay connected to tradition, even as the ways they do so change. 

Roughly 296,000 people around the world are currently learning Yiddish on Duolingo, according to data shared with NPR and Religion News Service. An estimated 60% are under age 25. Beyond the app, young people are studying the language in classrooms, performing music and theater, translating literature, and organizing cultural events on campus.

Yiddish has deep ties to Jewish cultural life across Eastern and Central Europe and the diaspora. Before World War II, there were roughly 11 million Yiddish speakers in the world. While today’s total remains comparatively small, estimated between 500,000 and 1 million, the current surge of interest among younger Jewish Americans marks a meaningful shift in how they explore their identity, apart from the institutional frameworks that often defined earlier generations. For some young learners, Yiddish brings them closer to family history. For others, it’s an introduction to poetry, music, and community they had never encountered before.

Reclaiming Jewish Heritage on Their Own Terms 

In the wake of ongoing global conflicts, some young Jewish adults feel out of place in the mainstream institutions they grew up with. Yiddish offers a way to embrace their Jewish identity that doesn’t require compromising their personal convictions. 

Lindsey Bloom, a senior at Mount Holyoke College, grew up attending Hebrew school and a synagogue where an Israeli flag hung near the front of the sanctuary. As she sought to distance herself from the Israeli government in recent years, she struggled to find a place in traditional Jewish life. “I’ve definitely talked to quite a few people that just stopped engaging with their Judaism because they didn’t know where to go,” she told NPR. Through Yiddish, she’s found a way to make art, take part in Jewish culture, and belong to a community that shares her values. She now performs in Khaverte, a Yiddish singing duo, and translates contemporary music, including a recent performance of Chappell Roan’s “The Subway.”  

Sally Kaye, a recent Barnard College graduate, began learning Yiddish to connect with her Eastern European heritage. She explained, “It’s hard to be, a lot of the time, in synagogue spaces and kind of traditional religious spaces that have been so focused on supporting Israel no matter what.” For university chaplains, that kind of discomfort is a cue to listen closely. A student who feels out of place in a synagogue may still be searching for a form of Jewish life that fits. 

Cameron Bernstein, a 27-year-old medical student who began learning Yiddish in her senior year at the University of Chicago, has built a TikTok following, sharing videos about the language, culture, and history. Raised with strong ties to Israel, celebrating her bat mitzvah there, she told PBS NewsHour: “I pray for people in the land of Israel. I don’t need to pray for the state.” As a Chicagoan Jew who is Filipino and Ashkenazi, she’s spoken of questions she receives from her audience about her mixed-race identity. “There’s a dissonance for them,” Bernstein said on the “Like Us” podcast, “there’s no dissonance for me.” 

The Language’s Living Legacy

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Yiddish connected Ashkenazi Jewish communities across a vast, scattered diaspora. The Yiddish Book Center’s permanent exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture, traces that history through thousands of rare objects, books, and artworks, many shown publicly for the first time, displayed alongside the musicians, playwrights, and artists creating in the language today. Cookbooks, dime novels, literary magazines, and a 1921 Yiddish translation of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species make the case that Yiddish is still very much alive. 

Mindl Cohen, the Center’s academic director and a visiting professor at Mount Holyoke, sees her own students draw on this inheritance to write original plays, compose music inspired by early-20th-century Yiddish song, and translate literature. Engagement through Yiddish is an accessible way for students to begin exploring heritage and tradition. They can study its history and create something new from it, deciding for themselves how it speaks to their lives today. 

The Workers Circle sponsors a college ambassador program that helps students organize cultural events on campus and connect that heritage to activism around immigrant justice, racial justice, and voting rights. “It’s been so meaningful for many young people these days, post Oct. 7, to explore what Yiddish language and culture can mean for them,” said Francesca Rubinson, the organization’s senior social justice organizer, “especially because many of them had Yiddish speakers in their own family just a couple generations ago.” 

Evolving Identity and Generational Shifts

The growing interest in Yiddish is unfolding alongside broader shifts in how young American Jews understand their own identity: 

• Shifting Priorities: Only about 4 in 10 younger religious Jews say support for Israel is central to their Jewish identity, compared with 7 in 10 who point to celebrating religious holidays, according to an AP-NORC poll. Younger Jews increasingly prioritize cultural heritage over institutional alignment. Pew data shows these generational differences predate Oct. 7, pointing to long-term identity shifts. 
• Diverging Views on Israel: Most American Jews across age groups support Israel’s right to exist, but generational gaps are widening in how that support plays out. Jewish adults under 50 are less likely than older generations to view the Israeli people (76% vs. 88%) or government (41% vs. 52%) favorably, according to Pew. 
• Far From a Uniform Group: The younger generation includes both a larger share of traditionally observant Jews and a larger share who connect to Jewish identity through cultural or family ties, not religious ones. Adults under 30 are more likely than those 65 and older to identify as Orthodox (17% vs. 3%), including Haredi (11% vs. 1%), according to Pew’s 2020 report, and more likely to claim no denominational affiliation at all. 
• Shared Cultural Practices: Despite the divides, everyday Jewish practice and participation in cultural activities remain strong across generations. 70% of Jews 18 to 29 regularly cook or eat traditional Jewish foods, matching older generations, and mark Shabbat or attend a Passover Seder at nearly identical rates.
• Social Strain: Discussions around Israel are increasingly fraught. Roughly 3 in 10 Jewish Americans have stopped speaking to someone over disagreements about Israel, about 4 in 10 unfollowed or blocked someone or disagreed with family over the subject, and 55% say they’ve been offended by someone’s comments on Israel, according to AP-NORC. 

Building Community Across Difference: A Role for University Chaplains 

University chaplains often meet students while they are actively deciding which parts of a tradition to carry forward. They listen carefully to understand where a student’s convictions lie and where they might depart from institutional norms. Students who share a religious or cultural background can differ considerably in their belief and practice. When a student feels alienated by traditional institutional spaces or polarizing climates, caring for them begins with what HIU Co-Director of Chaplaincy Dr. Bilal Ansari calls “a sacred act of offering one’s undivided attention, validating the student’s experience.”

Through cultural touchpoints, such as Yiddish, college chaplains can offer an entry point for Jewish students seeking ways to explore their tradition and identity, deliberately removed from fraught political and formal institutional contexts.

Hartford International University’s Master of Arts in Chaplaincy trains faith leaders to provide spiritual care in complex, multifaith settings, such as college campuses. HIU chaplaincy students build active listening skills and interfaith literacy through coursework in chaplaincy methods, psychology, sociology, and religious ethics, paired with practical experience. Graduates emerge prepared to support communities where individuals relate to belief and belonging in different ways. 

On a college campus, those abilities are essential, especially when serving Jewish students who want to stay connected to their heritage but are unsure of how or where to begin. A chaplain cannot dictate what belonging should look like, but when a student is reaching for a path into their faith, it’s a chaplain’s responsibility to listen, offer guidance, and help them find where they feel they belong. 

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