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Spielberg funds Yiddish lessons in Los Angeles schools
Jul 8, 2005, 5:38 GMT
Los Angeles - Film director Steven Spielberg has donated 130,000 dollars to fund a programme of Yiddish lessons in three Los Angeles Jewish schools, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The donation will come from Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation which has previously spent millions of dollars on preserving memories of the holocaust and the Jewish civilization that it destroyed. If successful the programme will be expanded to other schools.
The Yiddish language is a mixture of German and Hebrew. It is written using Hebrew characters and is read from right to left. Prior to the holocaust it was the mother tongue of an estimated 75 per cent of the world's Jews. But the slaughter of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis, together with the increased assimilation of Jews in western countries, and the growth of Hebrew as the national language of Israel contributed to its rapid demise.
© dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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