Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber

Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber — page 7
Yiddish Yiddish is the language of Ashkenazi Eastern and Central European Jews It is written in the Hebrew alphabet and uses some Hebrew words But it is also closely related to German It originated in Europe in the area that today is Germany around the tenth century Eventually it became the main language of Jews living in Poland Russia and many other European countries About 11 million people spoke the language before the Holocaust wiped out large populations of Yiddish speakers in the 1930s and 1940s The language lives on though with about 600,000 Yiddish speakers worldwide There are Yiddish theater companies Yiddish musical groups and even board games in Yiddish were closed but Ruth's parents kept theirs open They only closed their store for certain important Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and the first day of Passover Every Saturday Ruth's grandfather Zayda Gruber would take her to shul synagogue She'd sit with him downstairs because although men and women sat separately young girls could sit with the men Ruth loved chanting the Hebrew prayers even though she didn't understand the language In those days only boys attended Hebrew school After shul her mother served a lunch of gefilte fish chicken soup and boiled chicken Then Ruth and her sister Betty who was two years older would walk six blocks to visit their mother's parents Their grandmother Baba Rockower fed them pastries talked about her life in Russia and read them articles from the Yiddish newspaper NOTHING COULD STOP HER 10