doikeyt

Etymology

From Yiddish דאָיִקייט (doikeyt).

Why this word is great

DOIKEYT — [Noun] The principle of cultivating vibrant Jewish life within existing diaspora communities rather than pursuing territorial nationalism. From Yiddish דאָיִקייט (doikeyt), combining דאָ (do, "here") and the suffix -קייט (-keyt, "-ness"), literally meaning "hereness." Unlike "Zionism" (which gazes toward Jerusalem as redemption) or "Diasporism" (which romanticizes exile as destiny), doikeyt is the radical act of rooting identity in the present tense. It is the Bundist printing press churning out Yiddish pamphlets in 1930s Warsaw, the secular Jewish school thriving in contemporary Buenos Aires, and the stubborn persistence of a klezmer melody played on a Brooklyn stoop—an assertion that belonging need not be deferred to some distant promised land, but is a daily practice of presence.

noun

The focus on strengthening Jewish communities wherever they live (instead of focusing on founding a separate Jewish nation-state), usually associated with Bundism.“Der veg tsu undzer yugnt embodied the diaspora nationalist ideology of doikeyt, or “hereness," an East European Jewish political principle that championed the legitimacy of Jewish communities wherever they found themselves.”