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 Yiddish World, and for stories written in Yiddish,…
Yiddish
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The Schmooze Israel’s Only Secular Yiddish Publication Celebrates 60 Years
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. In May 1951, a group of immigrants to Israel, mainly Holocaust survivors, founded a social, political and cultural group based on the model of the General Jewish Labour Bund of pre-war Poland. That group, which became the Israeli branch of the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, bought a building…
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Culture August 5, 2011
100 Years Ago in The Forward It’s never a good idea to fall asleep on the train. Just ask Charles Cohen, a fish peddler on New York City’s Essex Street. Recently, Cohen zonked out on the Second Avenue Elevated Line and got a lesson he’ll never forget. After a hard day of selling fish on…
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The Schmooze Slideshow: A Festival of Exile
It takes some nerve to call a festival the “Golus Festival.” Golus, meaning exile or Diaspora, is usually something bemoaned in Jewish tradition. But from July 14 to 17, for approximately 60 people in (the appropriately named) Goshen, New York, Golus was something to celebrate. Organized by the creators of Yiddish Farm as a foretaste…
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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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