Rokhl Kafrissen
By Rokhl Kafrissen
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Yiddish World Why is Ken Burns so negative about Yiddish?
The “Yiddish is dying” claim reduces its speakers to “nonpersons” without a place in the popular discourse
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Opinion Birthright Has Failed Young Jews, But Not For The Reason You Think.
Over the past few years, Birthright, the ten-day Jewish roots trip to Israel, has taken something of a beating. Activist groups like If Not Now and J Street U have made a habit of attacking the trip, which has become something of a sacred cow in the Jewish community; these attacks include campaigns criticizing Birthright’s…
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Opinion How A #MeToo Scandal Proved What We Already Know: ‘Jewish Continuity’ Is Sexist.
Steven M. Cohen is perhaps the most important Jewish sociologist in America. A prolific writer and popular speaker on the Jewish circuit, Cohen is best known as the architect of the intermarriage “crisis” discourse; he has for decades used sociological surveys to insist that intermarriage is “the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity today.” But…
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Opinion Intermarriage Fear-Mongering Hides The Real Threat To Jews
At a moment in which liberal leaning American Jews — that is to say, the vast majority of American Jews — are feeling dismay at the coziness of fellow demagogues Trump and Netanyahu, the appointment of Labor leader Isaac Herzog to lead the Jewish Agency (in a sharp break with tradition, in which the prime…
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The Schmooze Yiddish Theater Takes on Capitalism
Since 2005, the New Worlds Theatre Project has been presenting classic Yiddish drama in English translation. This season they’re presenting a new English translation of H. Leivick’s 1921 play “Shmates,” here called “Welcome to America,” a naturalistic drama about the corrosive effects of American capitalism on a traditional Jewish immigrant family. In the notes to…
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The Schmooze Why Yiddish Matters
On May 15, Speakers’ Lab and the Forward will present a moderated town hall-style event called “Now What? The Future of New Jewish Culture” at the 14th Street Y in downtown New York City. In preparation for the event, each panelist was asked to respond to a question related to his or her work. The…
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Books Welcome to the Dybbuk Revival
The Dibbuk Box By Jason Haxton Truman State University Press, 192 pages, $19.95 Yiddish revival? That’s so 2011. This year is all about the Dybbuk revival. That is, insofar as a disembodied spirit can be revived, and monetized. So far the Dybbuk revival includes a book (“The Dibbuk Box”) and a movie set for summer…
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Culture Psoy Korolenko’s 21st Century Humor
It’s about two hours before their show at the JCC in Manhattan, and I’m having dinner with Psoy Korolenko and Daniel Kahn, the duo known as the Unternationale. As a solo performer, Korolenko has been winning fans in the United States, mostly at clubs and gatherings catering to young Russian émigrés and at university campuses….
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Yiddish World New documentary captures the lively history of Yiddish theater in America