After I got divorced from my Yiddish-speaking ex-wife and then from academia, where I occupied myself with Yiddish, among others, my Yiddish remained unemployed for a while. But since I got acquainted with Chabad Chassidus afterwards and started learning it both formally and privately, I've found a totally new use for my Yiddish though a passive one - reading and listening to teachings of three towering Chabad rabbis in Yiddish:
- Likkutei Sichos by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
- Tanya Leiyuno by Rabbi Yoel Kahn
- Sipurey tsadikim ('Tales of the Righteous') by Rabbi Yosef Wineberg, author of Lessons in Tanya
What I read and heard in Yiddish in my "prehistory" even seems a total waste of time in comparison to this treasure trove of Jewish life wisdom. I feel it was worth my while to study Yiddish just to get acquainted with these profound teachings.
I wish Yiddishists would also be exposed to them though it might be very difficult for them to understand the special kind of Yiddish in these teachings - full with Hebrew and Aramaic expressions from classical Jewish sources.
In my "prehistory", when I was still a very naive Yiddishist I used to consider Yiddishkeit as part of Yiddishism, but now I definitely consider Yiddishism as part of Yiddishkeit (and the former isn't even an indespensable part of the latter though Yiddish as a kind of תּשמיש-קדושה can greatly enhance one's experience of Yiddishkeit).
I definitely feel more connected to Yiddishkeit in Yiddish than in Modern Hebrew, which has no "Jewish taste" for me in contrast to traditional Ashkenazic Hebrew, in which I daven and read aloud Jewish books since several years ago even before encoutering Chabad Chassidus.
When I first took an interest in Likkutei Sichos a few years ago, this magnum opus seemed too daunting to me, so I started learning it orally with what seems to be the predecessor to The Daily Sicha (and its Android app). I'm going to spend one year in the next Jewish year 5983 with this application as well as Selections from Likkutei Sichos as a preparation for my four-year project of reading through the 39 volumes of Likkutei Sichos, which is written in Yiddish (24 volumes) and traditional Hebrew (15 volumes).