When Arun Viswanath, the Yiddish translator of J. K. Rowling’s worldwide bestseller “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was 12 years old, he suddenly had a revelation that made him feel dejected. Although he’s a grandson of the venerable Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter and the son of the Yiddish poet Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, and spoke the language with his extended family, including a dozen cousins his age, he had opened a Yiddish storybook only to realize that he didn’t recognize many of the words.
“That really frightened me, it depressed me,” Viswanath, known as Arele to his Yiddish-speaking friends, told the Forverts. “Ever since then I’ve felt a lot of pressure to speak Yiddish well. I began reading a lot more Yiddish and making flashcards of words I didn’t know.”
