Yiddish translation of Gita (?)

[Sara McClintock]

>>>Please help me to settle a question.  Is there a translation of the
>>>Gita into Yiddish?  Is it readily available?  Thanks for help
>>>and patience with frivolous inquiry.
>>>
>>My God, who on earth would be interested in reading this classical text  in
>a german patois ? What could be the meaning of such a translation?

Yiddish is a literary language in which thousands of books have been
written. It has a long history in Europe, where it was the primary language
of millions of people before the Nazi Holocaust. The Yiddish translation of
the Bhagavad Gita cited by Francois Obrist was published in 1955 in New
York. I can well imagine that there would have been many educated Jewish
intellectuals in New York at that time who would have been interested in
reading such a famous Indian religious work in the language with which they
were most familiar.

Under certain definitions, Yiddish can be considered a patois. But looked
at from another angle, it is a full blown literary language in its own right.
____________________

Sara McClintock
Section de langues et civilisations orientales
Université de Lausanne
email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch