Meet Peter Tran: An Unexpected Yiddish Fellow Traveler

We know that increasing numbers of Jewish university students are studying Yiddish. That’s no surprise; however, one does not expect to find a Catholic, first-generation Vietnamese American from Atlanta in a Yiddish class at Yale University, and after graduating studying the mamma loshen at the prestigious Steiner Summer Yiddish Program.

Meet 25-year-old Peter Tran.

The seven-week Steiner Summer Yiddish Program at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., accepts motivated students who come to immerse themselves in Yiddish language and culture. Students practice with renowned scholars and dorm in a communal residential setting. This summer, there were 17 students in the program, including Tran and an international Chinese student from England.

Tran notes, “I never expected to find myself studying Yiddish for an entire summer in rural western Massachusetts, but G-d works in mysterious ways. To Him, I am forever grateful for putting into my life such dedicated Yiddish instructors and a supportive community of budding Yiddishists. I enjoyed having a small part in the revitalization of Yiddish.”

Tran fully celebrated Shabbat with his classmates; Shabbat observance was a cultural and educational experience more than an exclusively religious one, thereby accommodating the range of religious observance of everyone. The group recited Netiilat Yadaim, Kiddush, and Hamotzi, and they celebrated Havdalah together Saturday evening. The group attended Yiddish language classes and seminars, had homework, and enjoyed extra-curricular events like song and dance workshops. During the school day, only Yiddish was spoken.

The Steiner experience included Yiddish-related internships. For his internship, Tran separated existing large Yiddish audio files into smaller, more accessible units. Then, he located the original sources and matched them to the new corresponding units. The process, which Tran welcomed, was challenging, to say the least.

When asked about spending his summer studying and socializing with Jews, Tran smiled, “I learned new things about Jews. For example, I didn’t know such a thing as Jewish geography even existed, but I saw it in action when one of my Steiner classmates found out that I had chatted with one of his cousins during Yale’s Commencement Weekend.”

Tran was personally affected. He says, “Seeing young Ashkenazic Jews so invested in learning a deeply rooted Jewish language reinvigorated my own goal of reaching a high level of proficiency in Vietnamese, which I speak conversationally with my parents at home. And I can understand where the wry and cynical Jewish mindset comes from. This characteristic found throughout Jewish humor would help Jews cope with and survive hostile environments. Jews perhaps found some levity in satirizing the absurdities they witnessed and endured.”

Tran’s introduction to Yiddish occurred at his local library’s annual book give-away when he purchased the classic 1968 compendium, “The Joys of Yinglish,” by Leo Rosten. Although Tran had been intrigued and curious enough to select the book, which humorously explores “Yinglish,” common words that have made their way into American English due to the influence of American Ashkenazic Jews, he didn’t delve into its contents until he spent a lot of time reading during the pandemic. The book, by Rosten, the famous Jewish raconteur, novelist and social scientist, that Tran bought as a curiosity along with a stack of other books, turned out to be the catalyst for his further exploration and study. Tran was both intellectually and emotionally drawn to the world of Yiddishkeit.

Tran explains this attraction, smoothly using Yiddish as he speaks, “Yiddish presents a history of tragedy and at the same time resilience. I could already notice the similarities between the Jewish and Vietnamese immigrant experiences. Stories of fleeing the alte haym [homeland] were not unlike those from my own family.

Moreover, the high regard Jews have for learning deeply resonated with me as well. Not having college degrees certainly didn’t stop my parents from nurturing in me a devotion to learning from an early age. Getting down to tachlis [the bottom line], I was drawn to learning Yiddish because first, I wanted to learn for the sake of learning, and second, it may have been a fortuitous outgrowth of my affinity for thinking and seeing the world, well, Jewishly.”

In his senior year at Yale, Tran decided to take advantage of the Yiddish class with professor Joshua Price that was offered. “Once I knew that Yale offered Yiddish, I jumped at the opportunity to learn it, especially with Dr. Price, since I wanted to make my senior year that much more memorable,” he explains. He learned to read the Hebrew letters, enabling him to study Yiddish. There were four students in the class.

Now that he has graduated, Tran is returning to the same law firm in which he had interned during 2021-22, one of his two gap years during college. That year, he also took some classes at Georgia State as a guest student. During his second Yale gap year of 2023-24, he worked part-time at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Yiddish isn’t the only language in which Tran has proficiency: he studied Latin throughout high school and Vietnamese and Korean at college. He plans to study at least one more Southeast Asian language, and he’s keen to learn Farsi and Hebrew. His university degree is in anthropology; however, he is also interested in history, ethnography, and international relations, all fields which can utilize knowing anthropology and speaking many languages. Tran enjoys reading, listening to all kinds of music, journaling, and writing poetry.

The translation of two stanzas of one of Tran’s poems, which he originally composed in Yiddish, follows. There is a backstory to the poem. Among the Yiddish films the Steiner students had watched, one was the post-Holocaust 1948 Yiddish film, “Our Children,” in which two Polish Jewish comedians visited an orphanage of children who had survived the Holocaust. The comedians were trying to entertain these children. Tran says, “My immense grief and anger while watching that film directly inspired me to write this Yiddish poem.”

From Generation to Generation

If only the angels had taken me instead of all of you!
Too young and blameless you all were.
Is your destiny nothing but a sick joke?
If so, the Angel of Death has gotten the last laugh.

Sitting by your graves, I beat my chest in anger.
Oh, were I to have the strength, I would have protected all of you better.
To the end of the Earth would I have chased down your killers.
I know nothing else beyond my grief.

Tran, who is now working in an Atlanta law office, is eager to meet people in Atlanta who speak Yiddish, so he can further his conversational ability. If you would like to speak Yiddish with him, please email him at Federalistpaper10@gmail.com.