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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Fast Forward Hasidic Modesty Patrols Enforce Jewish Law in Orthodox Neighborhoods
One of the most striking ironies of the Nechemya Weberman trial, which ended with his conviction on 59 counts of sexual abuse, was the revelation that the unlicensed therapist was a member of the Va’ad Hatznius, or modesty patrol, the self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong in the Satmar community. Until recently, the Va’ad Hatznius…
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Culture German Travelogue Unveils Stubborn Anti-Semitism
An unusual book was published recently in Germany: a travelogue that reveals, through hundreds of interviews in nearly 40 cities and towns in Germany, a disturbing obsession with the Jews, as well as outright anti-Semitism, among the German population today. The book, “Allein Unter Deutschen” (“Alone Among Germans”), published by the European publisher, Suhrkamp, is…
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News Inside Hasidic Modesty Patrols
One of the most striking ironies of the Nechemya Weberman trial, which ended with his conviction on 59 counts of sexual abuse, was the revelation that the unlicensed therapist was a member of the Va’ad Hatznius, or modesty patrol, the self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong in the Satmar community. Until recently, the Va’ad Hatznius…
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The Schmooze Englander’s Inspiration
The Forverts’s Rukhl Schaechter once heard a Yiddish professor complain that his American students knew nothing about Stalin’s execution of 13 Soviet Jews, which took place in August 1952. Even more discouraging, he added, was their “complete lack of interest” in the Yiddish culture that once thrived in the Former Soviet Union. Two days before…
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News Photo of Jew’s Lynching Goes on Block
A photograph of the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil factory superintendent, in Marietta, Georgia, was sold for $3,125 at an auction. The warm-toned photograph on postcard stock includes a pencilled caption on the back by an unidentified hand with the words: “Hanging of Leo Frank.” It sold at Sotheby’s on October 3….
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News From Awkward to In Love
Sitting in a circle, the group of nine men and women giggled nervously as they discussed things not to say or do on a first date. To an outsider, their suggestions might seem obvious. “Don’t talk about your last boyfriend or girlfriend,” one plump woman ventured with a giggle. “Don’t tell them what you don’t…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Shlomo Carlebach in Poland
A version of this post originally appeared in Yiddish. Filmmaker Menachem Daum, whose 2004 documentary, “Hiding and Seeking,” portrayed his journey to Poland to search for the peasant family that rescued his father-in-law during the Holocaust, has been busy at work on his next project: a film about Shlomo Carlebach’s historic concert tour of Poland…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Israel Under the Yiddish Microscope
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Three short Yiddish films created by students at the Ma’aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts, an Orthodox film school in Jerusalem, have recently become available for rental on the Internet, sparking interest from fans of Yiddish cinema worldwide. Many of the Ma’aleh students’ films…
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