By Myra Mniewski and Chana Pollack
Each month, a handful of New York feminists, who are also students of Yiddish, get together in each other’s homes to read the work of Yiddish women writers. Several writers, a couple of filmmakers and librarians, a culinary scholar and a singer/songwriter form the core of the group. Our population, however, expands and contracts, following cycles of visiting researchers, friends and the occasional curious academic.
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By Chana Pollack
From April to November of last year, the Museum of the City of New York featured an exhibit on the history of the Forward. When Jaime Rubin, director of medical research at Columbia University walked through the show over the summer, she realized that her family also had a contribution: her grandfather’s Forverts clippings scrapbook, a treasure hidden in plain view for the non-Yiddish reader.
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By Chana Pollack
This year, on November 4, the New York City Marathon Minyan will celebrate its 25th year of enabling runners to join a minyan, lay tefillin and really shout out the blessing “hanoten layaef koakh” (“He who gives strength to the weary”), all prior to setting out on the grueling 26.2-mile course through the city’s five boroughs.
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By Chana Pollack
Shloyme Zynstein was a powerful force in the rebirth of Jewish culture in the displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. Zynstein, his wife, Rachel, and their two young children lived at the Bamberg DP Camp in the American section of occupied Germany from 1945 to 1947, and it was there that he founded the Bamberg Yidishe Drama Studio. Journeying among DP camps, Zynstein and the troupe performed Yiddish theater favorites from Sholem Asch’s “Af Kidush Hashem” (“In the Sanctification of God’s Name”) to lighter fare, like Sholom Aleichem’s “Dos Groyse Gevins” (“The Lottery”). Zynstein directed and acted with the company, and also worked as photojournalist for the camp newspaper and for several other Yiddish papers. He managed to develop and print images in a home darkroom that he established in the Zynsteins’ apartment at the camp, which they shared with Rachel’s surviving cousins, Moyshe and Rifke Kupitz.
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By Chana Pollack
For most people, a hot weekend in July is best spent on the beach. For Yiddish lovers, it seems, it’s best spent at the cemetery.On a recent Sunday, more than 30 people gathered at the Old Mount Carmel Cemetery in the Glendale section of Queens, where — loaded with sandwiches, sunscreen and “The Penguin Book of Modern YiddishRead More
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