WikiHome for the Jews: Where To Go and Where Not to Go
By Dan Friedman July 27, 2009
Visitors to the main page of the English language Wikipedia today were treated to a short history of New York’s Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue.
Every day Wikipedia features a short article that they think might interest their readers which, on the English site, is always an article in English. There are however 267 different languages on Wikipedia, ranked by number of articles from English (with nearly three million articles and 300 million edits) down to Toki Pona (zero articles, but 1,710 edits!). Toki Pona, by the way, is a language with only 118 words invented by by Sonja Elen Kisa in 2001 to be “a minimal language that focuses on the good things in life.”
Hebrew is ranked number 28 in the article rankings with just under a 100,000 articles and Yiddish is ranked a disappointing 101 with fewer than 7,000 articles. However, making up for quantity through quality, some of the Yiddish entries are surprisingly graphic. For educational reasons, we suppose, the entry for prostitutes — should you ever need to avoid them — has a picture. Annabel, the German prostitute pictured (steer clear of Germans and prostitutes?), is blond and (barely) wearing red, so should be easy to spot in most Yiddish-speaking enclaves.
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.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
