Rukhl Schaechter is the Yiddish editor of the Forward and the producer of the YouTube series, “Yiddish Word of the Day.” She loves cooking, Israeli folk-dancing and talking to her grandchildren.
Rukhl SchaechterYiddish/Forverts Editor
By Rukhl Schaechter
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The Schmooze For President Obama, a Brand New Yarmulke From Lipa Schmeltzer
Hasidic pop star Lipa Schmeltzer recently delivered a pair of newly-designed silver yarmulkes for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle. The gift was the culmination of a promise he had made to the First Couple last Hanukkah, after the annual candlelighting ceremony at the White House, where the singer had been invited to perform….
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The Schmooze Two Yiddish Plays Get Drama Desk Nods
Two Yiddish-language theatrical productions, “Toyt fun a Salesman” and “The Golden Bride,” have been nominated in several categories for the Drama Desk awards. “Toyt fun a Salesman,” a translation of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” produced by the New Yiddish Rep, was nominated for Outstanding Revival of a Play, and its lead actor, Avi…
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Culture Video: In Hamburg, Muslim Girls Sing a Yiddish Song
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts. In Hamburg, Germany, a group of five 14-year old girls, most of them from Muslim Turkish homes, recently interviewed a Yiddish folksinger and even learned a Yiddish song themselves. The activity was part of Geschichtomat, a project that encourages eighth-graders in this north…
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Forverts in English How Aaron Frank Became the Unlikely Orthodox Head of Secular Day School
In 1996, Asher Abramovitz, the longtime principal of Kinneret Day School, a non-denominational community school in Riverdale, New York, received an unusual proposition: Aaron Frank, the 27 year-old assistant rabbi of a local Orthodox synagogue, offered to meet weekly with the school’s mostly non-observant eighth graders to chat about Jewish ethics and philosophy, a sort…
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Culture Meet the Orthodox Star of Oscar-Nominated ‘Son of Saul’
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In November of 2015, Geza Rohrig, the 48 year-old Hungarian-born lead actor of “Son of Saul,” an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, had an unexpectedly poignant moment. In the film, Rohrig plays a member of the Sonderkommando, the units of Jewish male prisoners in the…
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News Newcomers Transform Dying Upper Manhattan Synagogues Into Hot Spots
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts For years, the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol of Washington Heights, a large 99-year old Orthodox synagogue on 175th Street and Wadsworth Avenue, had barely been able to attract a minyan, the quorum of ten men required for worship. The 6 or 7 gray-haired veterans…
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Culture Can a ‘Twedding’ Be Kosher?
As the 200 guests entered the wedding hall at the Marriot hotel in Kansas City, Missouri last month, they had to wish the bride and groom mazel tov twice; first, to Brittany Choikhit and her groom, Max Margolies, and then to Brittany’s sister, Ashley, and her groom, Daniel Held. “We always wanted a double wedding,…
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The Schmooze New Festival Celebrates Hebrew Language and Culture
Photo: Larson Harley A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. As the musicians began playing the first strains of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s symphony, “Peter and the Wolf,” on the stage of the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan on March 15, the hundreds of children in the large, awe-inspiring sanctuary stopped their…
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