Forverts video series, Yiddish Word of the Day, has 12-year old fan

Image by Navah Harlow

By Forverts Staff May 5, 2020

Read this article in Yiddish

Ziv Pauli Harlow Siegel (Ziv Peleh, in Hebrew), a 12-year old sixth-grader at the Ramaz School, an Orthodox Jewish day school in Manhattan, has been an avid viewer of the new Forverts video series, “Yiddish Word Of the Day”, even using some of the words and phrases in his own conversations. That’s according to his grandmother and fellow Yiddish Word of the Day viewer, Navah Harlow, who, like her grandson, lives on the Upper West Side.

Navah Harlow, the founding director of the Center for Ethics in Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center, began teaching Ziv Yiddish words and phrases several years ago, saying he has a facility with languages. “He is great with Hebrew,” she said.

Last week, after watching the Yiddish Word of the Day clip on terms of endearment, he emailed his grandmother the question: “Ziskayt, ken ikh hobn hot chocolate?” (Sweetheart, can I have some hot chocolate?)

The series, which launched on April 27, consists of two-minute lessons, in English, on common Yiddish words and expressions. Topics covered so far include how to say thanks and the different words for “question” in Yiddish. The series has already received 14,000 views.

Rukhl Schaechter and Zach Golden are the staff of the Forverts, the Yiddish Forward.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish Editor