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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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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Culture How Family Holocaust Stories Became Multimedia Art Exhibit
A version of this article appeared in Yiddish here. Children of Holocaust survivors can be split into two groups: those whose parents or grandparents said nothing about those harrowing years, and those whose relatives gave them detailed accounts of their experiences. I belong to the first category. Although my father’s family had, like all the…
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News Polish Jews Protest Monument to Righteous Gentiles in Warsaw Ghetto
This article first appeared in the Yiddish Forverts Plans to erect a monument to Righteous Gentiles next to the newly dedicated Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews is evoking a growing anger in Poland and abroad. The museum stands on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of all the Jewish…
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News Jan Karski’s Relatives Angry at ‘Snub’ by Polish Jewish Museum
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. At the core exhibition of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which celebrated its official inauguration two weeks ago, there is a special corner devoted to Jan Karski, the officer of the Polish underground who was one of the first to alert the Western…
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News Why Rabbi Ysoscher Katz Left Satmars for Progressive Start-Up Synagogue
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. He grew up among the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Jews in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, in a childhood with rules so strict that playing Frisbee at summer camp was considered a radical move. Today he serves as the spiritual leader of a small, relatively young, progressive Orthodox synagogue…
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News Shiva Shifts Toward Shorter and Livelier Jewish Mourning for Dead
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As many an American rabbi will tell you, even Jews who rarely go to Sabbath or holiday services will often contact a local synagogue after losing a loved one, requesting help to arrange the shiva, the week-long mourning period, so that he or she can say kaddish,…
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