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
The Latest
-
The Schmooze Are Steve Carell and Paul Rudd Schmucks?
Paul Rudd and Steve Carell will be united once again in bro-mance in the upcoming “Dinner for Schmucks,” due out this July, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times. The movie, which will be directed by Jay Roach of “Meet the Fockers” and “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” is inspired by the 1998 French…
-
The Schmooze Bringing Back Yiddish…One Email at a Time
Last summer brother and sister Yiddish enthusiasts Shaul and Shulie Seidler- Feller decided they wanted to spread their love of the mameloshn, so they started the Yiddish Word-of-the-Week project. Mainly a listserv, but also a Web site in development, the project includes weekly mailings that feature a word of the week with an English translation,…
-
The Schmooze A Passover Nightmare
It’s Passover time, and a heady mix of liberation, freedom and matzah fills the air. While we recount the tale of the Children of Israel’s escape from Egypt, a strange inversion of this story unfolds in France. In this nightmare exodus, the Israelite (a non-Jewish klezmer clarinetist) flees Egypt (Moldova) and makes it to the…
-
The Schmooze A Serious Party With the Coen Brothers
On March 22, I went to a “Serious Night” party at B’nai Emet synagogue, in St. Louis Park, MN where the bar mitzvah scenes as well as some others in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man” were filmed. One of the audience members recounted his query to one of the Coen brothers asking why…
-
Books Chabon and Alter: Is it Esprit d’escalier or Trepverter?
Robert Alter discussed “tough Jews” with Michael Chabon on March 18 as part of the Berkeley Seminars in Modern Jewish Culture Lecture, but there seemed to be a gap in the Jewishness. Alter, the Berkeley professor and great critic of Jewish writing, interviewed the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chabon and asked about the author’s exuberant style, the…
-
Books Yiddish on the Psychoanalyst’s Couch: USA vs. France
In the English-speaking world, psychoanalyzing Yiddish, and the way it is spoken, is often done with a dollop of humor, as in “Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods” by Michael Wex, appreciatively reviewed by the Forward. French Jews, on the other hand tend to approach the subject comparatively soberly, as…
-
The Schmooze The SoCalled Movie at SXSW
It’s hard to articulate what makes Canadian artist SoCalled special. To say, as I did in a recent article, that he blends klezmer with hip hop, hardly does him justice. To add that he plays the accordion and performs magic tricks makes him sound like something of a sideshow. None of this conveys the way…
-
Life The ‘Mitzvah Girls’ of Borough Park
Fordham anthropology professor Ayala Fader is the author of “Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn” (Princeton University Press, 2009), which has just been named the winner of the Jewish Book Council’s 2009 Barbara Dobkin Award in Women’s Studies. The Sisterhood’s Rebecca Honig Friedman recently interviewed Fader about her fieldwork…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News That whites-only, no Jews allowed Arkansas community is legal, says state’s attorney general. How?
- 2
Opinion Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear
- 3
Film & TV How Jon Stewart evolved on Israel — at least on ‘The Daily Show’
- 4
Opinion I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Antisemitism Decoded How Trump is banning DEI at universities — except for Jews
-
Fast Forward Trump fired a commissioner over bad jobs numbers. Nixon targeted a ‘Jewish cabal’ at the same agency
-
Looking Forward That time my violin teacher tried to convert me to Christianity
-
Fast Forward UK’s largest Jewish group calls Israeli aid to Gaza ‘long overdue,’ months after disciplining members for criticizing Israel
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
