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In doing this, I want to avoid twisting or turning Yiddish into something it is not. Yiddish is NOT an "inherent" or even conditional language of resistance to Zionism, despite others using it as such. It IS an Ashkenazi Jewish language, and as such, has been used for just about every type of Ashkenazi Jewish thought, including Zionism

I guess what Yiddish is to me, with my dusty old books and scanned decaying newspapers, is a language of the dead. And what are the Dead to this conversation of Israel and Palestine? What they often are: An inheritance, a warning. But to me, they are more. They are my family. I am at home with my dead. Sometimes more than I am with the living. Sometimes, I think my clinical anxiety is a way of bridging that gap, every fear a wish. I think about horrible things happening to myself and others, so that we might . . . be more comfortable with each other. Because the dead are comfortable. They do not complain, nor do they praise. They say what they've said and stick with it. They are as happy or dismayed of us as we imagine they might be. Indeed, they are often creatures of our imagination, our ancestors.