Since 1906, the Forward has been answering reader dilemmas about daily life in “A Bintel Brief,” Yiddish for a bundle of letters. Send your queries to [email protected], and listen to a podcast version of our signature advice column.
Bintel Brief
The Latest
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The Schmooze Matt Freedman’s Moving and Inspiring Memoir
When we read Matt Freedman’s harrowing and hilarious illustrated memoir “Relatively Indolent But Relentless,” we were struck by how it was unlike traditional memoirs. So, we passed a copy along to Liana Finck, the incredibly talented artist and author of ‘A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York.’ Finck’s response was both enthusiastic….
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The Schmooze Bintel Brief Goes All 2014
Starting in 1906, the Forward launched “A Bintel Brief,” a Yiddish-language advice column which documented the trials and tribulations of adapting to life in America. More than a century later, our friends at the Tenement Museum have picked up the torch — with a few modern touches. The Jewish Daily Forward, the most widely read…
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Culture Ab Cahan’s Ghost Returns in Cartoon Form
● A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York By Liana Finck Ecco, 128 pages, $17.99 The advice column known as “A Bintel Brief,” meaning “a bundle of letters,” was the brainchild of Abraham Cahan, the founder of the Forverts, the original Yiddish-language incarnation of this very publication. In 1906, when the paper…
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Culture How Does Olympic Ice Dancer Charlie White Balance Gold Medal and Judaism?
At the recently completed Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Americans Charlie White and Meryl Davis thrilled audiences with their gold medal victory in ice dancing. Jewish Americans, in particular, celebrated Charlie White as a new breed of Jewish sports hero, following in the footsteps — or, in his case, skate marks — of Benny Leonard,…
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News Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Jewish Dating Advice Isn’t Far Off From Yenta’s Heyday
In 1926, a distraught father wrote to the Forverts’s advice column, A Bintel Brief, with a problem: Where are all the Jewish men? With four daughters to marry off, and no Jewish husbands in sight, the man was considering moving to another city. “We live in a country town where we are the only Jewish…
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Fast Forward Joyce Brothers, Jewish TV Psychologist and Advice Columnist, Dies at 85
Psychologist Joyce Brothers, who parlayed her 1955 victory on the TV game show “The $64,000 Question” into a nearly six-decade career as a television personality and columnist, died on Monday, her publicist said. She was 85. Brothers died of natural causes in New York, said Sanford Brokaw, her Los Angeles-based spokesman. She began dispensing advice…
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Life Dear Abby, You Were One Impressive Gal
I am not generally a fan of the term “gal,” but what other word can be used to describe Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, the beloved creator and author of Dear Abby, who died last week at age 94? With a legion of fans worldwide — the column is carried by 1,400 newspapers and has a…
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Opinion ‘Dear Abby’ Dies — And Ab Cahan Weeps
Pauline Phillips, who wrote the ‘Dear Abby’ advice column, died yesterday at the age of 94. The daughter of Russian immigrants was born on the Fourth of July in Iowa and learned the lexicon of everyday middle American life growing up in the heartland. Her advice was always sharp, witty and sound — and her…
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