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Hasidic Authors Offer Readers a Thrill
The Internet contains scores of Hasidic-dominated Yiddish sites, including chat rooms, blogs, bulletin boards and a separate version of Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia. Reading one of the Yiddish bulletin boards, I came across the following dismissive comments of an anonymous critic: “Give a look and you’ll see that nowadays all [ultra-Orthodox] Yiddish newspapers and…
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Mamaloshn: Why the Gay Connection?
On a chilly Monday evening in January, Yugntruf, a New York-based not-for-profit designed to promote Yiddish, assembled a panel to address the question “What Attracts Us to Yiddish?” Mostly in Yiddish, but with occasional forays into English for the benefit of the uninitiated, the evening’s seven panelists gamely tackled the question with a range of…
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Postcard Collection Reveals Images of a Grandfather’s World
Back in 1906, when he was 15, Benny Swartzberg could not have foreseen that, a century later, his growing collection of postcards would provide the raw material for an online store managed by his grandson. But today, Swartzberg’s grandson Steven Weiss has turned that collection into an unusual shop, selling such merchandise as journals covered…
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Cabaret Act Revives Music of Warsaw
On a frigid January evening in New York City, Rebecca Joy Fletcher and Stephen Mo Hanan performed their two-person act, “Kleynkunst!: Warsaw’s Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret,” before a full house at Helen’s Restaurant, Cabaret & Piano Lounge in Chelsea, as part of a five-day-long European cabaret festival called Kabarett Fête. The title of Fletcher’s…
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Books Publisher Opens Final Chapter
Last month’s publication of “The Cross and Other Jewish Stories” by Ukrainian-born Yiddish author Lamed Shapiro marks both a new beginning and the beginning of the end for the New Yiddish Library Series. “The Cross” is the seventh book of the series, a collaborative effort involving the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature, the…
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Thai Course Launched
A new Yiddish course is debuting in an unexpected place: Bangkok. The Goethe Institute in the Thai capital is offering Yiddish for the first time to graduates of its advanced German-language program, most of whom are Thai Buddhists. The class, which is being conducted in German and Yiddish, will also teach the basics of Jewish…
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Film Captures Stage Legend
Filmmaker Dan Katzir is the last person anyone would expect to fall in love with Yiddish. Growing up in a prominent Israeli family with strong Zionist beliefs — his great-great-uncle was former Israeli prime minister Moshe Sharet, and his great-uncle was former Israeli president Efraim Katzir — he had been brought up to be averse…
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Unusual Ingredients Make Social Group Simmer
Where can you find a lively venue these days in which more than a third of the attendees under the age of 30 are fluent Yiddish speakers? Every Thursday, from 10 p.m. until about 2:30 a.m., a group called Chulent meets on the third floor of the Millinery Centre Synagogue — an old building in…
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Groups Mum On Iraq, Despite Antiwar Tide
Washington – Even as a new study found that American Jews are significantly more opposed to the Iraq War than are Christians, Jewish organizations decided not to take up the issue at their annual policy conference. Drawing from the results of 13 polls conducted since 2005, the Gallup Organization found that 77% of American Jews…
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Jesus Film Slammed by Scholars, Christians
The Orthodox Jewish director of a new documentary about Jesus’ purported burial chamber is beating back a flurry of attacks, saying that Jewish archaeologists and Christian scholars are threatened by the implications of his claim. “Israeli archaeologists don’t like to find anything connected with Jesus, because it seems to ‘Christianize’ Jewish history, and Christian scholars…
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Running On "Jewish Time"
FRAN “THE NANNY” DRESCHER APPLAUDS ZUBIN “THE CONDUCTOR” MEHTA There’s that old saw about Jewish events starting on “Jewish time” — 20 minutes late or, as Israel’s consul general, Arye Mekel, once joshed, “Israeli time, which is 20 minutes after Jewish time.” Since the February l Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert began at 7 p.m., not…
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Yiddish יהודה גור-אריה און שירי שפּירא געווינען רובינליכט־פּריז פֿאַר ליטעראַטורYehuda Gur-Arye and Shiri Shapira win Rubinlicht Prize for Literature
די רובינליכט־פֿונדאַציע טיילט צו יערלעכע פּרעמיעס פֿאַר ליטעראַרישער און קולטורעלער טעטיקייט אויף ייִדיש און לטובֿת ייִדיש.
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Yiddish אַ בריוועלע דער מאַמען (אַ דערציילונג) A letter to my mother (story)
בעת אַ ייִדישער סאָלדאַט ליגט אין אַ סאָוועטישן מיליטערישן שפּיטאָל פֿאַרמעסט זיך זײַן מאַמע קעגן דעם ייִדישן הויפּט־דאָקטער
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