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 Camp in the Catskills: A Summer Tradition
In 1959, a group of Holocaust survivors, most of them living in the secular, Yiddish-speaking enclave of the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx, did something remarkable. Each of them shelled out $500 of hard-earned money to found a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains. The survivors’ goal was to pass on to the next generation…
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Culture My Father’s House; My Mother Tongue
On April 7, the eve of Passover, Israeli television did something unprecedented: It aired a film in which the entire dialogue was in Yiddish. Director Dani Rosenberg’s movie, “Beit Avi” — literally, “My Father’s House”; known in English as “Homeland” — is a 40-minute drama about a young Holocaust refugee who comes to Israel in…
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News In Sweden, Middle East Conflict Plays Out in the Town Square
After counter-demonstrators critical of Israel interrupted a recent pro-Israel rally in Malmo, Sweden, the Jewish community held a second rally last week. The follow-up gathering was a bold challenge not only to the community’s increasingly vocal pro-Palestinian neighbors, but also to a perceived rise in anti-Israel sentiment in the Swedish media and government and in…
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News Yiddish Teachers Form New Group
When Lori Cahan-Simon, a singer and music teacher at the I. L. Peretz Workmen’s Circle school of Ohio, in Cleveland, was promoted to Yiddish teacher 10 years ago, her excitement was hampered by anxiety. “I had no connection to other Yiddish teachers,” she told the Forward, “and when I looked online, I saw nothing.” Finally,…
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Culture Young Patients Find a Home Away From Home
In early September, Leora and Chagai Greenspan, a couple from Nahariya in northern Israel, brought their 2 1/2-year-old child to San Francisco for medical treatment. The child had a brain tumor, and the surgeon at San Francisco Medical Center was the only one they could find who was willing to perform the delicate surgery. Without…
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Culture A Different Drum: How a Modern Orthodox 23-Year-Old Danced Her Way Into a Unique Spotlight
One of this year’s arts fellows at Drisha, a Torah study center for women that is located on New York’s City’s Upper West Side, is a 23-year-old Barnard College graduate named Anna Schon. As a product of the Modern Orthodox day schools, she blends into the student body easily. But when she is not studying…
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News The Key Dilemma
In many cities around the globe, hotel guests enjoy hi-tech conveniences. Lobby doors whiz open automatically; the faucets in public restrooms begin spurting water as soon as a hand approaches and toilets flush when the user stands up. Most important, entering one’s room is easier than ever before: Instead of the cumbersome, old-fashioned key, the…
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Culture My Father’s Words
This month, during the first yahrzeit of my father, Mordkhe Schaechter, of blessed memory, I recalled a story my father used to tell us about his paternal grandfather, Reb Itsye Mordkhe — a shokhet (slaughterer) who was not very popular among the butchers of the shtetl because whenever he rendered one of their animals treyf,…
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