This is the Forward’s coverage of the Yiddish language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews in Europe and still spoken by many Hasidic Jews today.
For more stories on Yiddishkeit, see Forverts in English, and for stories written in…
Yiddish
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Down Home Brooklyn
Photo courtesy of Andy Statman The version of “The Lord Will Provide” on “Old Brooklyn,” Andy Statman’s virtuosic two-CD excursion through all manners of American and Jewish music, struck me as unusual, and not just because the voice and clarinet duet is spine-tinglingly powerful. It’s more because the 18th-century hymn, written by James Newton —…
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Culture How ‘Gay’ Lost Its ‘Shtick’ Over Time
Orin Hargraves, who describes himself as “an independent lexicographer and contributor to numerous dictionaries,” has sent me an Internet article whose point of departure is a June column of mine about the Yiddish word “shtick.” There I pointed out that “shtick” has acquired a new meaning in American English — that of a gripe or…
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Culture Looking Back: November 18, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward • West Point military academy student Joseph Izrael has been expelled for “poor behavior.” Izrael, who was born in Birmingham, Ala., and is the son of a tailor who served in the Civil War, claims he is a victim of anti-Semitism. He has a means of support in Adenauer,…
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Books An Actor Who Broke a Leg — or Two
From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor By Alexander Granach, with a new introduction by Herbert S. Lewis Transaction Publishers, 304 pages, $29.95 Actor Alexander Granach performed in Yiddish as a member of Berlin’s Jacob Gordin Theatrical Society early in the past century. He went from his shtetl in Galicia…
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Culture Looking Back November 11, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Detroit is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It also has a Jewish community of about 20,000 that is on the rise. Currently, Detroit’s Jewish ghetto centers on Hastings Street, a typically dirty Jewish street dotted with little shops and lunchrooms. The street itself wouldn’t be…
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Books University of the Ghetto
Gloria Spielman‘s most recent book, “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime,” is now available. “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime” won a silver medal in the 2011 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Spielman‘s posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite, courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Israel Under the Yiddish Microscope
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Three short Yiddish films created by students at the Ma’aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts, an Orthodox film school in Jerusalem, have recently become available for rental on the Internet, sparking interest from fans of Yiddish cinema worldwide. Many of the Ma’aleh students’ films…
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Culture Looking Back: November 4, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Joseph Pulitzer, famed publisher of the New York World and the St. Louis Post Dispatch, has died. Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1847 to Jewish parents, Pulitzer arrived in the United States during the Civil War, 18 years old and penniless. Although he didn’t know a word of English,…
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Yiddish ייִדיש אין ציריך: אַ נײַע היים פֿאַר אַן אַלטער שפּראַךYiddish in Zurich: A new home for an old language
אויף אַן אָפּשערעניש לעצטנס האָט די משפּחה גערעדט ענגליש און שווייצער דײַטש, אָבער די צערעמאָניע האָט מען געפֿירט אויף ייִדיש
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Fast Forward As images from Gaza spread, US rabbis wrestle with war’s morality from the pulpit
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Fast Forward Donald Trump says US will distribute food in Gaza, where he says there is ‘real starvation’
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Fast Forward Regina Spektor responds to pro-Palestinian protester at concert: ‘You’re just yelling at a Jew’
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