Courtesy of Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Red Jews: In conjunction with its conference on “Jews and the Left,” the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is showing an exhibition on art from the “Yiddish Left-Wing Press.”Read More
Sheva Zucker’s mother Miriam was still attending a women’s Yiddish reading group in Winnipeg, Manitoba, until just a few months before she died at age 97. So Zucker, executive director of the League for Yiddish, knew the best way to memorialize her: Start a blog of Yiddish poetry about mothers.Read More
Goldie Morgentaler recalls sparring with her mother, the Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb, about the English translations of her work. It shows how much she cared about writing.Read More
This season the New Worlds Theatre Project is presenting "Welcome to America," a new English translation of H. Leivick’s 1921 play “Shmates.” It's a naturalistic drama about the corrosive effects of American capitalism on a traditional Jewish family.Read More
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 Rokhl Kafrissen, Yiddish arts critic, writes about why she’s a Yiddishist.Read More
The Jewish lord mayor of Dublin showed up in the Forverts building to greet the editorial staff and wish the paper a happy 60th birthday. Robert Briscoe talked about the incredible influence the paper has had on the American Jewish community and about how he had the honor of meeting Abraham Cahan.Read More
Who could live with Isaac Bashevis Singer? The sexual escapades of the most successful Yiddish writer in America were public knowledge. Still, Singer was a married man.Read More
Jacob Gordin once predicted that 'Jewish theater in America has no future.' But he was wrong, and his own drama still has a role to play in that legacy.Read More
When Yiddish writer Chaim Grade died in 1982 he was highly regarded in Yiddish literary circles, though not as well known to English readers. But recent gatherings at YIVO and the Yiddish Book Center are bringing Grade's novels and poetry back to the attention of scholars and casual readers alike.Read More
Grammy-winner Esperanza Spalding burst on to the music scene. But her evocative first name goes back centuries and was transported to Eastern Europe, where it became Sphrintze in Yiddish.Read More
Anyone who happened to be at the Jewish Arbitration Court on Madison Avenue at Clinton Street got a good glimpse a real live “angel” from Harlem-based Father Divine’s Black Heaven — a Jewish angel, one that left the Garden of Eden on the Lower East Side; she left her husband and children to go uptown and join the good father’s International Peace Mission.Read More
Tel Aviv may be known as the first Hebrew city, whose residents often struggled with the language of Eastern European Jews, but from its early days, a glorious Yiddish culture thrived there. Yaad Biran, a researcher of Yiddish culture and a tour guide calls the city “a forgotten city, Jewish and cosmopolitan, exciting and entertaining.”Read More
Boris Sandler is best known as Editor-in-Chief of the Forverts. Less known is his effort to preserve 10 contemporary Yiddish writers on film, talking about themselves and their paths through Yiddish literature.Read More
What’s the difference between a slob and a ‘zhlob’? To find the answer, Philologos messes around in the feed trough of linguistic history.Read More
Famed German writer and exile Thomas Mann spoke before an audience of gentiles and Jews at an event that was organized by the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and took place at Carnegie Hall. In his speech, Mann accused Hitler of deadening the German people’s brains.Read More
Filmmaker Menachem Daum has been busy at work on a film about Shlomo Carlebach’s historic concert tour of Poland in 1989. During the nine-day tour, Carlebach visited historic Jewish synagogues and cemeteries, and performed in four cities.Read More
By day, as photo and film archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Jesse Aaron Cohen tends to thousands of images of bygone Jewish culture. By night, he’s half of the Brooklyn-based “existential pop” duo Tanlines.Read More
It is no small feat to recreate the world and emotions of a bygone era. But in his astonishing show celebrating his grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has done it. And it is a joy.Read More
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