In this week’s Forward, Ben Frumin reported from New Delhi on a new production of the classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof” — in Hindi. Most of the cast members had never met a Jew before. Some turned to the Internet to learn about Jewish history, the importance of the Sabbath, kosher meat and the…
After an article in the Forward detailed a controversial kosher slaughtering method, the Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has repeated an earlier promise to do away with it. A spokesman for the Chief Rabbinate told The Jerusalem Post this week that “we are doing everything to improve” the process known as “shackle and hoist” — a practice…
Heard any good Yiddish folksongs lately? Chances are good that the answer is “no.” Not because there aren’t any good Yiddish folksongs to be heard; for generations, the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe sang innumerable songs about love and loss, death and marriage. They sang to their children to soothe them to sleep, and they…
It’s been more than three quarters of a century since young intellectuals were voicing their Yiddish-inflected ideas in the parks, cafés and tenements of lower Manhattan. But the days of the Yiddish intelligentsia are still rolling for 24-year-old Menachem Yankl Ejdelman, who is the newly appointed leader of Yugntruf, a worldwide organization of young Yiddish…
Renowned scholar David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind chair in Yiddish literature and culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The following excerpt is from his forthcoming memoir, “Yiddishlands” (Wayne State University Press). In the work, Roskies discusses his life and the life of his mother, and explores the Yiddish experience and historical…
In a brightly lit classroom, decorated with colorful posters and Hebrew lettering, the 24 second grade schoolgirls, dressed in crisp blue uniforms, listened as the young, modestly attired teacher reviewed the Genesis chapter in which God commands Abraham to leave his homeland. “Vayomer — who knows the meaning of the word vayomer?” the teacher asked…
Most academic symposia don’t offer a steady supply of cold beer and hot pirogi. Fewer still offer the chance to see Michael Alpert, frontman for the progressive klezmer band Brave Old World, dancing on a chair. The first-ever Yiddish Dance Symposium had both. The bulk of the symposium, which was chaired by Alpert and by…
In 1946, a fictional memoir of a resistance fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto appeared in a Yiddish newspaper in Argentina. Titled “Yosl Rakover Talks to God,” the piece described the destruction of Jewish Warsaw in such sensitive detail that it was translated into a multitude of languages, propelling its Lithuanian-born author, Zvi Kolitz, into the…
Berlin – A Nobel Prize-winning author and a Nazi-hunter were among the 3,000 signatories to a petition released last week, protesting a massive oil deal between an Austrian company and Iran. The $32 billion deal for oil rights, inked by the Vienna-based OMV oil company, appears to be the biggest ever with Iran. Since the…
Jerusalem – The only thing separating Israel from an invasion of Gaza — a full-scale assault that its political leadership does not want to launch and its military commanders are reluctant to wage — is the notorious inaccuracy of the makeshift Qassam rocket. “If a Qassam falls on a kindergarten, a school or even a…
As the leader of the country’s largest synagogue movement, the Union for Reform Judaism’s Rabbi Eric Yoffie normally tries to stay out of partisan politics. But in recent months, as presidential contender Barack Obama has been subjected to a wave of public criticism from segments of the Jewish community, Yoffie has found himself increasingly distressed…
