With the arrival of Hanukkah comes the reemergence of dreidels from closets, drawers and cupboards. These tops are a beloved part of the holiday — but where did they actually come from? Like many things in Jewish history, the story that most of us heard about dreidels as children is entirely ahistorical. There were no…
Ever since the beginning of the klezmer revival in the 1970s, music critics and musicians have wondered just how close to its European roots the music they were performing is. The musicians of the 1970s had access to only two sources from which to learn: the few still-living musicians, such as clarinetist Dave Tarras, and…
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts For years, the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol of Washington Heights, a large 99-year old Orthodox synagogue on 175th Street and Wadsworth Avenue, had barely been able to attract a minyan, the quorum of ten men required for worship. The 6 or 7 gray-haired veterans…
The largest Yiddish cultural festival since the 1930s is coming to New York. Kulturfest: The First Chana Mlotek International Festival of Jewish Performing Arts, of which the Forward is a media sponsor, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene with a weeklong series of Jewish music, theater, film and art events….
Imagine if a quiz on a popular website asked “How Much Spanish Do You Know?” and then proceeded to provide its readers with a list of words alternating between misspelled Spanish curses, some real words that weren’t actually Spanish and pure gibberish. It’s hard to imagine such a quiz being published outside of the realm…
As the 200 guests entered the wedding hall at the Marriot hotel in Kansas City, Missouri last month, they had to wish the bride and groom mazel tov twice; first, to Brittany Choikhit and her groom, Max Margolies, and then to Brittany’s sister, Ashley, and her groom, Daniel Held. “We always wanted a double wedding,…
Photo courtesy Cohen Media Group A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Like many other aspects of Ashkenazi Jewish culture, old-time Jewish delicacies are becoming harder and harder to find. In 1931 there were more than 2,500 delis and 150 kosher dairy restaurants in New York City alone; today there are only 21…
Photo: Larson Harley A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. As the musicians began playing the first strains of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s symphony, “Peter and the Wolf,” on the stage of the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan on March 15, the hundreds of children in the large, awe-inspiring sanctuary stopped their…
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