Jordan Kutzik is the deputy editor of the Yiddish Forward. Contact him at kutzik@forward.com.
Jordan Kutzik
By Jordan Kutzik
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Forverts in English VIDEO: Yiddish songs for the 4th of July
Like most immigrant groups, Jews who settled in the U.S. were eager to assimilate, while still holding on to their cultural roots.
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Forverts in English The Yiddish professor and female Orthodox rabbi sharing Yiddish children’s literature with the world
Read this article in Yiddish A jack of many trades is sometimes a master of them all Speaking with Miriam Udel, the Yiddish professor at Emory University in Atlanta who is reacquainting the world with Yiddish children’s literature, you quickly notice something remarkable. In one moment she sounds like a literary scholar and in the…
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Culture Meet the sociologist who left his Chabad community and wrote a pathbreaking study of ex-Hasidim
Read this article in Yiddish When Schneur Zalman Newfield studied at Chabad yeshivas, everyone thought he was a pious young man who had little knowledge of the outside world. They couldn’t have imagined that Newfield had secretly assembled a stash of contraband books – modern Yiddish literature, science and history texts and even Russian novels…
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Forverts in English An album of Yiddish electropop from Poland captures the coronavirus age
Read this article in Yiddish Listening to Maria Ka’s Yiddish electropop album, “Di Arumike Velt” [The Surrounding World], was for me like hearing music from a parallel universe. Not only are the Yiddish songs about the coronavirus era and issues facing women in 2020s Poland, but the music itself is unlike anything I’ve heard performed…
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Forverts in English WATCH: In 1955 there was a Yiddish song on the Tonight Show
Read this article in Yiddish Recently I came across an unexpected clip from the Tonight Show from 1955 featuring a swing version of the Yiddish song, “In mayne oygn bistu sheyn” (you’re beautiful in my eyes), sung by a duo called the Burton Sisters. The recording was surprising to me for several reasons. First, it’s…
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Culture I took Duolingo’s new Yiddish course for a test drive. Here’s what I found.
Read this article in Yiddish In nearly eight years of covering Yiddish events for the Forverts, I have never seen anything approaching the level of excitement accompanying the release of Duolingo’s Yiddish course, which will go live Tuesday, April 6. Ever since work began on the course five years ago, reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Duolingo’s…
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Culture On a seemingly ordinary Boro Park night, a terrifying Hasidic nightmare erupts
Read this article in Yiddish When Keith Thomas, a clinical researcher-turned-novelist and filmmaker, was studying for his master’s degree in religious education at Hebrew Union College, he overheard an unsettling story that would remain with him for years. Two old men in an Orthodox synagogue were discussing a shomer, the ritual guard who is assigned…
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Forverts in English WATCH: The Forverts premieres Yiddish version of Woody Guthrie’s classic, ‘This Land is Your Land’
Read this article in Yiddish The Forverts has released a Yiddish rendition of folksinger Woody Guthrie’s classic song, “This Land is Your Land.” The music video, which features an international group of Yiddish singers and klezmer musicians, was produced by punk-klezmer musician Daniel Kahn. While a Yiddish version of “This Land is Your Land” may…
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