Questionnaires

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

Among the very first documents being digitized for the YIVO Vilna Collections Project in the Lithuanian Central State Archives are materials relating to YIVO’s own history. These remainders of the files of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, as YIVO was known in the 1920s and 1930s, have been organized to reflect YIVO’s organizational structure.

This linguistic questionnaire is drawn from the records of YIVO’s Philological Section. (Philology, a term no longer in wide use, was the study of literary and written texts from a historical, literary, and linguistic perspective).

Designed to collect data about the use of the “gender of the substantive” [gender of nouns] in spoken Yiddish, the questionnaire was prepared by YIVO founder and noted linguist Max Weinreich in 1928 and distributed in 1929. The introduction notes that the gender of nouns “varies widely” among different Yiddish dialects and even within dialects depending on locale. One of the aims of the questionnaire is to help arrive at a consensus for recommended usage in the standardized, literary Yiddish that YIVO was a pioneer in developing.

This particular form, filled out by L. Mular in Brisk (Brzesc nad Bugiem), was received by YIVO in June or July 1930. In the sample page presented here, he (or she) has filled in the locally used articles (der, masculine or di, feminine) before various nouns. Mular notes, “Here in Brisk we very rarely use ‘dos’ [neuter article].”

Questionnaires were seen as a key research tool by YIVO, paralleling and augmenting the work of the several hundred zamlers (amateur collectors) that the institute recruited around the world to help it collect artifacts. With limited resources, YIVO needed to rely on ordinary people to collect data and primary resources. This methodology was of a piece with its commitment to the Jewish masses: they were to be simultaneously subjects of and participants in the institute’s scholarly endeavors.

It is not surprising, therefore, that there are many questionnaires among the surviving records of the YIVO Institute. One that will soon be digitized in New York from YIVO’s RG 1.1 Records of YIVO (Vilna): Administration is this undated questionnaire issued by the Psychologists’ Circle of the Warsaw Friends of YIVO. Meant to be filled out anonymously by respondents, it has 54 questions, which progress from basic and informational to more personal, asking about conflicts with parents, belief in the soul, and belief in free will.

Download a PDF version of the psychology questionnaire.

Download an English translation of the questionnaire.

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.