Wednesday, February 02, 2005

A Horst is a Horst, of Course of Course

When I woke up this morning and went outside, I saw German flags flying on the streets. Fearing the worst, I returned home and quickly checked the news. It turns out, German President Horst Kohler is here to visit Jerusalem. In fact he was driving up and down my street all night and this morning making quite a racket with a host of limousines and Israeli police vehicles. No coup, no invasion -- just a German president driving to visit the Israeli president, prime minister, and Knesset.

Speaking of the Kenesset, he's supposed to speak there today. Many MK's are boycotting the speech because it will be in German, the language that the nazi's spoke. But as Yosef Lapid, himself a holocaust survivor, points out (cf. Jerusalem Post), Theodor Herzl also wrote his book Der Judenstat in German. Now obviously Mr. Kohler won't be speaking in Hebrew, but I think I have a reasonable compromise: why not speak in Yiddish?

1 comment:

jacob said...

goyim redn yidish? a shanda! yidish iz heilig.