Preserving the mother tongue.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Donna Gehrke-White

MIAMI _ So there David Weintraub was _ trying to fit 350 people into a Miami Beach gallery for a night of Yiddish poetry, music and art. (He had wondered whether anyone would show up.)

The event _ which included Holocaust survivors passionately reciting poetry while listeners sobbed _ proved to be a turning point for Weintraub. Six years ago, he quit as a civil rights attorney to focus full-time on promoting the ``mama-loshn,'' the mother tongue.

Today, many credit the 46-year-old South Miami attorney with helping stoke the resurgence of Yiddish, a 1,000-year-old language and culture that is a smattering of Hebrew, Aramaic, German, Slavic and the Romance languages.

As executive director of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Pinecrest, Fla., Weintraub has developed Yiddish classes online at www.yiddishculture.org, attracting students from as far as Norway and Australia. He's also scheduled local lectures, art exhibits and helped bring to …