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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Opinion Don’t Buy the Junk Science That Says Yiddish Originated in Turkey
When I first saw the short film from Sheffield University featuring Dr. Eran Elhaik claiming that Yiddish has its roots in Turkey, I thought it must be an elaborate ruse, a Sacha Baron Cohen-esque prank to poke fun at the sometimes inane world of academia. But I soon realized that it was, alas, all too…
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Yiddish World Remembering Archivist and Warsaw Ghetto Survivor Rose Klepfisz
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The archivist Rose Klepfisz died in her apartment in the Bronx on March 23rd at the age of 102. She is survived by her daughter, Irena Klepfisz, a writer and professor at Barnard College, as well as by relatives in Australia and admirers in Bundist circles and…
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Culture Family, Faith, Food and Other Keys to Becoming the World’s Oldest Man
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. One day shortly after the outbreak of World War I, when Yisrael Kristal was a child, word spread throughout his hometown of Zarnow, about fifty miles from Lodz, that Emperor Franz Joseph was visiting a nearby town. The boy, along with a group of Jews from his…
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Yiddish World Listen to a Forgotten and Revealing Interview With Golda Meir
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I recently gave a talk about the history of the Forward at Yiddish New York, a festival of Jewish culture that was held in Lower Manhattan. The Forward’s archivist Chana Pollack helped me to locate items of historical interest to show during my presentation. Among the various…
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Culture ‘Yidlife Crisis’ Takes Off — With Assist From Mayim Bialik
Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman, the co-creators and stars of the online Yiddish-language sitcom “YidLife Crisis” have been on a roll in the past few months. The comedic duo was recently nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for best original digital media series and has taken their act on the road, performing a live version…
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Culture Our Favorite Hanukkah Toy Was Actually a Non-Jewish Irish Gambling Game
With the arrival of Hanukkah comes the reemergence of dreidels from closets, drawers and cupboards. These tops are a beloved part of the holiday — but where did they actually come from? Like many things in Jewish history, the story that most of us heard about dreidels as children is entirely ahistorical. There were no…
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Music Excavating Lost Pre-War Klezmer Recordings
Ever since the beginning of the klezmer revival in the 1970s, music critics and musicians have wondered just how close to its European roots the music they were performing is. The musicians of the 1970s had access to only two sources from which to learn: the few still-living musicians, such as clarinetist Dave Tarras, and…
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The Schmooze How ‘Bas Kol’ Became a Viral Hasidic Hit
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts It’s rare today for a Yiddish song to become a sensation. It’s even more rare for one to go viral on Facebook and Twitter. But that’s just what happened recently with the new music video for Chaim Shlomo Mayes (Mayesz)’s dance-hit “Bas-Kol” (Divine…
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