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: Josh Waletzky’s Yiddish Song
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Pete Rushefsky writes about Josh Waletzky and “Yaninke,” a song Josh learned from his father, Sholom Waletzky: One of the leading contemporary composers of Yiddish song, Josh Waletzky (b. 1948) grew up in a family that was deeply embedded in the secular Yiddish world of Camp Boiberik…
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The Schmooze Horas for Headbangers
Back in 1997, “Buena Vista Social Club” introduced American audiences to a style of Cuban music that was popular in Havana in the 1950s. The album charmed the critics, topped the charts, spawned a documentary film, and was championed by Starbucks when the coffee behemoth decided to become a curator of world music. Such a…
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Books Q&A: Author Michael Wex on the Jewish Comic Novel
Michael Wex is best known for his acerbic, authoritative books on Yiddish language and culture, but in this fall’s “The Frumkiss Family Business,” he has turned his attention to fiction. The sprawling novel is a farcical family saga, following three generations of a Jewish clan in Toronto’s Bathurst Manor neighborhood and questioning, in Wex’s characteristically…
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The Schmooze Yinglish and Spanglish at the International Accordion Festival
Mark Rubin is a musician based out of Austin, Texas, who has played at the International Accordion Festival since 2001. His latest project is the Atomic Duo. The International Accordion Festival is not well known outside of Texas, and that’s a shame. For a decade, the people of San Antonio have been treated, at no…
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The Schmooze Yeshiva University Linguist Honored by Basque Academy
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. On October 3, Yeshiva University socio-linguist and longtime Forverts contributor Dr. Joshua A. Fishman was honored by the Euskaltzaindia, or Royal Academy of the Basque Language, for his contribution to the struggle on behalf of “minoritized” languages. At a ceremony at the…
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Books Soviet Literature in Dark Times
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. When I bought Natalia Gromova’s book, “The Downfall: The Fate of a Soviet Critic in the 1940 and ‘50s,” it didn’t occur to me that it would have a Jewish dimension. I’m generally interested in this period and in this subject, and…
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The Schmooze Chaim Grade at 100
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. One hundred years after his birth, the late, great Yiddish novelist and poet Chaim Grade can still draw a crowd. This was evident at an October 4 commemorative evening at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which featured fascinating literary analyses of Grade’s work as well…
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The Schmooze A (Belated) Little Sukkah
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman writes about “A Sikele, a Kleyne,” as sung by his mother, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: “A sikele, a kleyne ” is based on a popular poem by Avrom Reisen called “In suke.‟ I know of at least three recordings: Louis Danto’s “Masters of the…
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