This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The story of the Jews during the Holocaust era is usually divided into that of two zones: the Jewish zone, which includes the ghettos and the camps under the Germans and their allies, and the “free” zone, which includes the territories that were free of Nazi domination….
Ivanka Trump is saying that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, were the matchmakers behind seven marriages, as she told Sean Hannity in an interview. Trump’s claims about her and Kushner’s matchmaking prowess came about after Hannity revealed that he had tried to set up a former employee of Trump’s through Hannity’s defunct dating website,…
This post is in response to “Yenta’s Dirty Roots,” which ran on The Sisterhood on February 10, 2013. One of the many interesting things about Yiddish is that no one is entirely sure how it started. Though it originated in Medieval Europe, its exact roots are the subject of competing hypotheses among scholars. What isn’t…
Read a follow-up post by Ezra Glinter on the true Yiddish history of the word “Yenta.” Pssst! Wanna know a juicy secret? Get this: The most well-known Yiddish word describing women doesn’t mean what we think it does. I’m no linguist, but after spending a little time on several authoritative Yiddish dictionaries, I’m convinced that…
In case you didn’t have enough grandparents, neighbors, and rabbis trying to make sure you don’t remain single and Jewish for long, your iPhone is getting in on the matchmaking game. Today, the New York Post reported that Yenta is a new app to solve your romantic and semitic woes. In a similar model to…
I’m enjoying this thread on gossip that Sisterhood contributor Sarah Seltzer has taken up has taken up, because I love talk and I love information. And when you combine the two it’s likely you’ll cross the border into the realm of gossip. Does this mean that by extension I also love gossip? Sometimes I do….
Alma Heckman’s JWA post about snark, yentes and gossip sent me on a further etymological treasure hunt for the roots of the word “gossip” — which as Heckman notes, went from positive, genderless connotations to a positive female one before arriving at its current incarnation. Gossips in England were once a group of women, a…
100% of profits support our journalism
