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
The Latest
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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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Yiddish World When Jews Embraced Tin Pan Alley
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. “In the 1890s, writers of Yiddish melodramas simply took famous, successful American popular songs and set Yiddish texts to their melodies,” N.B. Minkov wrote in “Pionern fun der Yidisher Poezye in Amerike,” or “Pioneers of Jewish Poetry in America” (1956). “This was a big hit with the…
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Yiddish World Remembering Dina Abramowicz, The YIVO Librarian Who Preserved Vilna In New York
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Whenever I see an announcement for the latest exhibit at the Neue Galerie, a New York museum of German and Austrian Art, I’m reminded of the nearly four decades (1955-1994) when the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research had its home in that same Upper East Side townhouse….
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Culture WATCH: How Standard Yiddish Pronunciation Originated
Dr. Hershl Glasser, a Yiddish scholar, lexicographer and Forverts contributor, visited the Forverts’ studio to discuss the history of standard Yiddish pronunciation and to explain why he champions it despite objections from many Yiddish speakers.
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Yiddish World WATCH: Leana Jelen, Yiddish Comedian, Speaks About Sign Language Interpretation
Leana Jelen, a native Yiddish-speaker who works as a sign-language interpreter, visited the Forverts’ studio to talk about her love of languages and what she enjoys about sign language interpretation. Last fall Jelen starred in a series of Yiddish joke videos produced by the Forverts.
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The Schmooze Judge Judy Schools RuPaul In Yiddish
This is the future that liberals want — a Jewish woman reality TV judge correcting a queer black business tycoon on his use of Yiddish. Judge Judy Sheindlin and RuPaul Charles, known as RuPaul — he’s the ultimate mononym — are one of a kind, having both used reality TV to become icons. For him,…
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The Schmooze Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kate McKinnon Attend ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ In Yiddish
The rabbi, learned and wise, is the most important member of any shtetl. That is, unless Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and “Saturday Night Live” star Kate McKinnon show up. That’s just what happened on Tuesday night at Stage 42, the Off-Broadway theater where the Folksbiene’s celebrated Yiddish-language revival of “Fiddler on the Roof”…
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