Welcome to 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 July 29, 2011
100 Years Ago In The Forward The body of 4-year-old Harry Levin, who disappeared earlier in July near Hanover, Conn., was found on a hill in a wooded area about two miles from Schechter’s Farm. The scene at the farm when the boy’s body was brought there was horribly tragic. The boy’s father fainted upon…
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The Schmooze How a Ukrainian Refugee Became Germany’s Top Russian Translator
Courtesy of Cinema Guild A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. It is not by chance that Vadim Jendreyko’s documentary, “The Woman With the 5 Elephants,” about an 87-year-old Russian-to-German translator, opens with the image of a train crossing a bridge. As the lights from the windows of the moving train flicker through…
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Culture Doubling Dutch
Native Dutch speaker Gerda Elata-Alster writes in response to my column on “shtick,” which spoke of Yiddish words in American English sometimes taking on — or, as I put it, “intermarrying with” — non-Jewish meanings: “Many Yiddish words have been integrated into Dutch, too, although I can’t remember any ‘intermarriages.’ Unfortunately, many of these words…
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The Schmooze Are Hasidic Singers Exploiting Leiby Kletzky’s Death?
There is a time for mourning and there is a time for PR. The shocking murder of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, z”l, in Borough Park this week, is an unspeakable horror. And yet, with what seems to be a total lack of sensitivity regarding what kind of public reaction is or isn’t appropriate, Haredi artists are…
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The Schmooze Michelle Bachmann’s ‘Chutzpah’ Gaffe
Michele Bachmann needs to work on her “chutzpah.” The GOP presidential candidate attempted to use the word on Fox News Wednesday night — but while the Christian Midwesterner’s embrace of Yiddish is striking, her pronunciation would have caused confusion in the shtetl. The Minnesota congresswoman, on a tear in Iowa polls but as gaffe-prone as…
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Food Krakow’s ‘Jewish’ Cafes
Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, is famous (or notorious, depending on how you look at it) for its Jewish-themed tourist infrastructure. Its “Jewish” cafes present a nostalgic literary image of prewar Jewish life — some with taste and sensitivity, others in a disturbingly kitschy manner. At least a dozen (and maybe more) cafes, restaurants, hotels…
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Culture July 22, 2011
100 Years In The Forward Has anybody seen Abie Levitt’s wife? The Levitts moved with their son to Portland, Ore., from New York a few years ago. Not long after, Rosie Levitt started making noises about how the family should move back to New York. Abie didn’t want to go back — he was making…
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The Schmooze When Yiddish Came to North Korea
On September 4, 1965, Lin Jaldati stepped onto a stage in Pyongyang, North Korea and quite possibly became the first person in Communist North Korea to sing in Yiddish. As I will discuss in a July 13 talk at the Yiddish Book Center’s Paper Bridge Summer Arts Festival in Amherst, Mass., Jaldati and her husband,…
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