This article shows how the concept of cultural intimacy can help scholars better analyze ethnoracial identity politics in the United States. It draws on ethnographic research with Yiddish language activists, or “Yiddishists.” Yiddishists define their engagement with the language through a discourse of “seriousness”—marked by hard work and intensive study. Seriousness, as a kind of affective orientation and cultural aspiration, offers Yiddishists a powerful, if subtle, resource to contest power relations in the American Jewish community. Through everyday discourses and performances of seriousness, Yiddishists set themselves apart from an American Jewish “mainstream,” or “establishment,” while simultaneously critiquing the grounds on which mainstream American Jewish institutions and individuals claim to speak on behalf of the community. Seriousness does this, I contend, by resignifying dominant American Jewish language ideologies about Yiddish as signs of American Jewish cultural intimacy—specifically, communal embarrassment over perceived deficits in knowledge about Jewishness.

本文说明了文化亲密性的概念如何帮助学者更好地分析美国的民族身份政治。它借鉴了意第绪语语言活动家（即“义德主义者”）的人种学研究。依地语主义者通过“认真”的话语来定义他们对语言的参与-以认真工作和深入学习为标志。认真性是一种情感取向和文化志向，它为意第绪主义者提供了一种有力的，甚至微妙的资源来与美国犹太社区的权力关系进行抗衡。通过日常的讨论和认真的表演，意第绪主义者将自己从美国犹太人的“主流”或“机构”中脱颖而出，同时批评了主流的美国犹太人机构和个人声称代表社区发言的理由。