How to greet people in Yiddish on each Jewish holiday
Learn how to wish someone a Happy New Year and beyond with this Yiddish language guide
Courtesy of the Forward
By Forverts Staff September 22, 2022
When people start learning Yiddish, there are so many lessons to master that there’s often not enough time to learn the various ways of greeting people on Shabbos and the Jewish holidays.
And Yiddish has plenty of those. Sometimes one phrase is used when seeing the person and another one when saying good-bye, reflecting the deep significance that these days of the calendar have on the Jewish psyche.
To make it easier to know which expression to use, Yiddish activist Jonah Boyarin has compiled this handy list of bagrisungen (greetings) for shabbos and all holidays, presenting each expression in Yiddish, English transliteration and translation. Those phrases that may not be easily understandable are accompanied by explanatory notes:
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
