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
The Latest
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Yiddish and Metal, Together Forever?
Courtesy of Dibbukim It’s almost too fitting that the band Dibbukim comes from Sweden. I don’t know that much about metal, but in my research I’ve found out that the country is home to such bands as Opeth, Amon Amarth, and Hammerfall. I’ve also watched a few episodes of the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse, which,…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Hasidim in Love
Courtesy of Eve Annenberg Eve Annenberg has finally hit the big time. After experiencing initial difficulties getting “Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish,” shown at Jewish Film Festivals (difficulties owing, in part, to a scene in the film with nudity), the movie premiered in January at the New York Jewish Film Festival, and receives a theatrical…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Bushels and Baskets of Stories’
Courtesy of Riverside Films “He wrote standing up… Standing, walking, running.” So Bel Kaufman, granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, describes the world’s most influential Yiddish writer. “He would look off into the distance and chuckle, as if hearing what his characters were saying to him, and then he would write.” Joseph Dorman’s new documentary, “Sholem Aleichem:…
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Culture July 15, 2011
100 Years In The Forward An Italian and a Jew stood before the magistrate. The Italian said: “This murderous Jew tried to kill me.” Apparently this was true, and so the Jew was arrested. But it wasn’t the whole story. The two are neighbors. The Italian has children who make a great deal of noise…
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Books News of the Carrot, Not Pain of the Stick
BREAD TO EAT AND CLOTHES TO WEAR: LETTERS FROM JEWISH MIGRANTS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY By Gur Alroey Wayne State University Press, 256 pages, $29.95 You may think you know why your ancestors made their way to this “Golden Land,” but scholar Gur Alroey’s “Bread To Eat and Clothes To Wear” demonstrates that the…
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The Schmooze Zions Other Than Zion
Michael Chabon’s novel “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” imagined Jewish refugees turning “Aleyska” into a Yiddish-speaking sanctuary for the “frozen chosen” in the 1940s. But truth is stranger than fiction. As I explain in a short documentary, which will be screened as part of a program on “Other Zions” at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research…
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The Schmooze Video: Sholem Aleichem in America
Though Sholem Aleichem is widely known for his depictions of Eastern European shtetl life, the famed Yiddish writer spent a number of years living and writing in America. In a new documentary titled “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness,” director Joseph Dorman details the life of Sholem Aleichem, from his early successes to his many,…
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Culture Bryna Wasserman Picked To Lead National Jewish Theater
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” But there are second acts, apparently, in Yiddish theater lives. In late June, the National Yiddish Theatre — Folksbiene announced that Bryna Wasserman, formerly the head of Montreal’s Segal Centre for Performing Arts, will take over as executive director, joining the Folksbiene’s artistic…
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