Why wasn't yiddish passed down the generations?

Question

I know the main prob. reason is that yiddish speaking people (mainly Jews) wanted to assimilate when they immigrated to US-- any other thoughts about this?

thanks for the 2 responses thus far. I should have re-worded my question. Obviously there are people who still speak yiddish today- it's spoken in the Hasidic community, for example. But it seems that it least in the US that so many Jewish european immigrants who originally came to this country did not speak yiddish to their children, and now their grandchildren are almost completely ignorant, as opposed to other cultures that have passed down their language/culture. I'm just wondering if anybody has some interesting theories why

Answer 1

I don't think it's fared either worse or better than any other immigrant language. The only difference could be that Yiddish has no new "supply" from Europe as opposed to all the other large immigrant languages (Russian, Polish, etc.).
The reason that it has no "supply" is that the Yiddish language is not "backed up" by a country (as for instance Hebrew is by Israel). A language not having a stable "headquarters" in the world where it's the official, national language is bound to disappear... it's just a matter of time.
I live in Brooklyn near the Hasidic area and here lots of kids speak Yiddish, but the number of those who use English primarily is increasing slowly but surely.

Answer 2

There are still plenty of yiddish speaking people. It is still passed down from generation to generation, but as with any immigrant group (others than those who benefit for everything being bilingual so they don't have to learn English) they need to take on the language of where they live in order to get by.

Answer 3

Since it still exists today, it obviously WAS passed down thru generations.