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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Yiddish World Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s zeyde was noted Yiddish writer
Read this article in Yiddish. Sure, you might have known that Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s selection for U.S. Secretary of State, has a band — but did you know that his great-grandfather, Meir Blinken, was a Yiddish writer? The Ukraine-born elder Blinken, whose Yiddish nom de plume was B. Mayer and who was buried…
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Yiddish World WATCH: A powerful song by a young woman who left the Hasidic world behind
Read this article in Yiddish. Although there have been a number of new Yiddish songs recorded in the past couple of years, it‘s rare to see songs written by women who have left the Hasidic community. Hannah Gee was raised Hasidic but decided early on that this wasn’t the life for her. Yet, in contrast…
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Yiddish World Why the exhibit on the Warsaw Jewish quarter, Muranow, is so good
When I first heard that Warsaw’s Polin Museum had an exhibit about Muranow, the former Jewish quarter of the Polish capital, my first instinct was to buy a ticket to Warsaw – until I remembered that we’re in the midst of an epidemic. Although I live in Israel, Muranow has become very familiar to me…
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Yiddish World Podcast: A Jewish revolutionary tells her story
Read this article in Yiddish The Yiddish Book Center recently launched a unique podcast in which the actress, translator and Yiddish theater scholar Caraid O’Brien reads her own translation of the memoirs of a Russian revolutionary. The program, “The Last Maximalist,” recalls the extraordinary early years of Klara Klebanova, a Jewish girl who left her…
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Books Yiddish culture barely touched upon in ‘The New Jewish Canon’
Read this article in Yiddish What were the most important Jewish texts of the last 40 years? What did the Jewish opinion-makers have to say about the most important issues of Jewish survival? Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire Sufrin attempt to answer these questions in a collection of 70 selected documents called “The New Jewish Canon:…
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Culture As popularity of Yiddish skyrockets, Knesset launches Yiddish initiative in Israel
Read this article in Yiddish This week, a lobby was launched in the Knesset, urging the government to take responsibility for preserving Yiddish as a national language, and ultimately, for Israel to become the world center for Yiddish activity. A Knesset lobby is a group of Knesset members who want to enlist support for individuals…
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Yiddish World In a delightful short film, a Hasidic bookbinder leads a secret online existence
Read this article in Yiddish. Right from the beginning, “The Binding of Itzik”, a new short film playing in the online Yonkers Film Festival and winner of Best Narrative Short Film at the Berlin Underground Film Festival, treads into uncharted territory. As innocuous piano music plays in the background, the film opens with a computer…
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Fast Forward NYC has at most 5 Yiddish-speaking contact tracers despite COVID spike among the Orthodox
Read this article in Yiddish While New York City has hired thousands for its Test and Trace Corps in an attempt to contain the coronavirus pandemic in the city, there are no more than five Yiddish speakers on staff. The low number is especially striking as a second wave of the virus is breaking out…
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