On a stretch of the East Village, New York City’s Christmas hush was interrupted by a peculiar melody. It was not a Bing Crosby croon or Mariah Carey’s melismatic whistle, but the faint hum of a clarinet playing along to “Undzer Nigndl.”

The Klezmer tune radiated from the 14th Street Y, where hundreds of Jews (and some gentiles) had assembled for Yiddish New York, a new festival celebrating the language that perennially seems to be teetering on extinction. The event is an urban reincarnation of KlezKamp, a Catskills gathering of Yiddish aficionados that ended its 30-year run last December.

Faced with storefronts shuttered for the holiday, many New York Jews have long considered movies and Chinese food their Christmas totems. But on Friday, attendees instead indulged in Yiddish theater workshops, linguistics lectures and the chance to commune with others determined to preserve a language in eclipse.

“This is the time of year where Jews are often made to feel marginalized,” said Joanne Borts, one of the festival’s organizers. “What we get to do here is reimagine ourselves as a mainstream culture.”