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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Culture Looking Back: October 28
100 Years Ago in the Forward On trial for running a prostitution ring, Morris Cohen, a resident of New York City’s Lower East Side, pleaded not guilty. His defense was based on the fact that he was a drunk and was not in command of his faculties when he was pimping young women. Unfortunately for…
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Culture Looking Back: October 21
100 Years Ago in the Forward In a heartbreaking meeting of relatives of the 145 victims of the Triangle Waist Company fire, hundreds protested the fact that no one has been brought to justice for the crimes of negligence that caused the fire and the deaths of all the shop workers. As sobs were heard…
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The Schmooze City Pulls Yiddish Signs Ordering Women Aside
Municipal workers in Brooklyn have taken down signs directed at Hasidic women — not because they’re religious in content, but because of where they’re posted. The signs, written in Yiddish, direct Hasidic women in the Williamsburg neighborhood to keep a distance from their male counterparts, telling them, “Precious Jewish daughter, please move aside when a…
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The Schmooze Q&A: Mandy Patinkin on Yiddish and the CIA
Mandy Patinkin has yet to meet a medium he cannot conquer. He first hit national prominence as Che Guevara opposite Patti LuPone’s Eva Perón in the Broadway production of “Evita,” for which he won a Tony Award. His film credits include “The Princess Bride,” in which he uttered the iconic lines: “My name is Inigo…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Russian Klezmer Orchestra Tours Stateside
It’s no coincidence that The Klezmasters are highly reminiscent of The Klezmatics. The former band, which bills itself as Russia’s only klezmer orchestra, was inspired by the latter. Having been created in 2003 by a group of classical music students who met through Hillel in Moscow, The Klezmasters have been gaining notoriety in recent years…
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Culture Looking Back: October 14, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Our latest hero is a 17-year-old sweatshop worker from Cleveland, Becky Fisher. During the 11-week-old cloak makers strike, Fisher has been arrested 39 times. She has been beaten by hired goons, cursed by the police and threatened by judges. Despite all that, she has consistently refused to back down….
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The Schmooze No Pasaran! London Parties Like it’s 1936
October 4 was the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, which erupted when Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists planned to march through the East End of London. Five thousand black-shirted men amassed on the border of Stepney, which at the time 60,000 Jews called home. But they didn’t get in: 300,000 people…
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Books More Moses Than Job
A version of this article appeared in Yiddish, here. ‘I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left’: The Poetics of Boris Slutsky. By Marat Grinberg Academic Studies Press, 400 pages, $65 In the poem “Dream,” Boris Slutsky laconically summed up two defining facts of his generation:…
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Yiddish אלי שאַרפֿשטיינס סאָוועטישע נאָך־מלחמהדיקע ליטע רעדט אויף ייִדישEli Sharfstein’s Soviet post-war Lithuania speaks Yiddish
די דערציילונגען אין „מײַן ווילנער זאַוווּליק“ שילדערן דאָס ייִדישע לעבן אינעם נאָכמלחמהדיקן ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד פֿון אַ פּערזענלעכן קוקווינקל.
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Culture A voice for his generation, Tom Lehrer found laughter even in the most sensitive aspects of Jewish life and history
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Fast Forward ‘I was first and foremost Jewish,’ said Wesley LePatner, killed in NYC shooting
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Fast Forward Americans’ support for Israel in Gaza plummets to record low, new Gallup poll finds
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