Zachary Baker, one of the pre-eminent Judaica librarians in the country, remembers his first time quite clearly.
It was at Columbia University, in the summer of 1971, during a time when generations of young people were hungering for community and itching for new experiences. Baker recalls he was nervous.
It helped that his first time took place with less than a dozen people.
They were united to pursue a common passion, exploring a topic that had long been off-limits in most universities.
The subject was Yiddish.
The mamaloshen, or Jewish mother tongue, is one of the greatest loves of Baker’s life. And through his new position as the Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica at the Stanford University libraries, it’s a passion that he hopes to instill in others.
“I didn’t come to the Bay Area as a missionary for Yiddish,” Baker said last week. But all protestations aside, Baker’s reputation precedes him.
“Zachary Baker is the consummate librarian of old Jewish culture,” said Steven Zipperstein, the director of Stanford’s Jewish studies program. “He is arguably unrivaled in the history of modern Yiddish books. One of his greatest gifts is combining profound intellectual knowledge with accessibility, from beginning students to senior scholars.”
Baker, who has been at Stanford since the start of the fall semester, is a native of Minneapolis and holds degrees from the University of Chicago, Brandeis University and the University of Minnesota.
Serving as a conduit to Jewish culture, in addition to slaking people’s thirst for knowledge, is one of the greatest perks of Baker’s profession. “I get a huge charge out of helping budding scholars,” he said. “If there’s something a student needs, I’ll try my best to get it.”
While serving as the senior librarian at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York –a post he held for 12 years — Baker was approached by a student with an unusual request.
She wanted the infamous anti-Semitic tracts “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And she wanted them in the original Russian. Twenty-four hours later, Baker honored her request.
Among the other projects Baker was involved with at YIVO was the compilation of the “Yiddish Catalog and Authority File,” the most extensive bibliographical tool available for Yiddish-language publications. While at YIVO, Baker also supervised the microfilming of Nazi documents, periodicals from displaced persons camps and studies on Slavic and Estonian Jewish life. He also worked on the preservation of Ladino books and publications.
“I had a conventional Hebrew upbringing,” he said. “Like many children in the late ’50s and early ’60s, my exposure to Yiddish culture was minimal. My parents spoke it to each other but rarely to me.
“Maybe my interest in Yiddish is Freudian,” Baker suggested, laughing. “It could be my way of getting back at my parents for talking in a secret language.”
According to Baker, Yiddish was spoken by over 10 million European Jews prior to 1939 — more Jews than speak Hebrew today. “Yiddish is an indelible part of Jewish heritage,” he said. “Jews would be amnesiacs if they didn’t make an effort to preserve and study Yiddish.”
However, if the common assumption is that Yiddish only exists as a nostalgic relic, Baker is ready to remedy that erroneous thinking. “The Yiddish language has been written off as dead and dying for years and years. But I happen to know that it’s a vibrant, thriving language.
“How do I know this? Because on my wall is a service announcement from the New York Transit Authority. It’s written in two languages,” Baker said. “English and Yiddish.”