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
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Fast Forward Nearly 700 scholars and students condemn YIVO librarian layoffs
Read this article in Yiddish here Nearly 700 scholars, students and former employees and volunteers of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research have signed an open letter condemning the organization’s decision to lay off all of its librarians. The letter, which is written in English and Yiddish, called for the immediate reinstatement of the four…
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Yiddish World YIVO, world’s biggest Yiddish research center, lays off all its librarians
Updated 4:30 p.m. Read this article in Yiddish here. The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the world’s preeminent center for the study of the Yiddish language, culture and history, has laid off all of its librarians. Four people were let go in the move, which was announced internally last week and confirmed by executive director…
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Opinion ‘Blood Flows Like Water And People Fall Like Flies,’ The Forverts Remembers The Great War
In April, 1915, as The Great War was raging in Europe, your favorite Yiddish newspaper had 176,125 daily readers, according to the masthead’s circulation figures. The United States had yet to enter the fight, but The Forverts covered it aggressively. And on April 9th, New York-based editors and publishers of foreign language newspapers who differed…
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News In New York State, Citizens Can Still Vote In Yiddish — But How Many Do?
On Election Day, New York City provides translation services for widely spoken languages, like Spanish and Mandarin. But Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has also been working recently to improve ballot box accessibility more widely — even for speakers of tongues that are less well known, like the mame loshen, or mother tongue, of Ashkenazi…
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Culture Here Are The Winners Of Israel’s National Yiddish Story Contest
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In July, Israel’s National Authority for Yiddish Culture launched the first government-sponsored Yiddish-language writing contest ever held in the Jewish state. This week, the authority announced the three winners. Ethel Niborski, age 17, won first prize for her short story “Letters to a Blind Grandfather,” for which…
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Yiddish World How ‘YidLife Crisis’ Tackled Anti-Semitism
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The 1980s marked the peak of a bizarre and often disturbing television trend: the “very special episode.” Such episodes featured tragic events intruding upon the usually idyllic world of evening sitcoms. “Very special episodes” served an overt pedagogical purpose, warning about everything from drunk driving and the…
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Culture WATCH: The Timeless Yiddish Love Song, ‘It’s Dark Outside’
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Adah Hetko is a Yiddish singer who adapts classic songs from the collections of ethnomusicologists such as Ruth Rubin and gives them a modern feel. In this recording, produced by the Forverts, she performs her take on the folk song “In Droysn Iz Fintster” (“It’s Dark Outside”)…
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Yiddish World The Day The Rabbi Cursed His Congregation
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. This summer, my synagogue, Young Israel Ohab Zedek in Riverdale, New York, has embarked on a new adventure, completely renovating and expanding its building in order to accommodate the growing number of young Jewish families moving into north Riverdale and south Yonkers. Gazing at the large, wooden…
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