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
-
Yiddish World WATCH: Have You Ever Heard This Yiddish Song About Swallowing Goldfish?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Aaron Bendich, a young reader of the Yiddish Forverts, spends a lot of time hanging out with his 103-year-old grandfather Max. Max Bendich, a child of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and a WWII-veteran, remembers a plethora of rare Yiddish songs, including novelty songs that were popular on…
-
Yiddish World Study Yiddish In Greece? Yes, Really.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Although Greece has a venerable 2,400-year Jewish history, it’s certainly not the first place that comes to mind when you think of Yiddish. Although Yiddish was spoken a bit in Thessalonica before World War II, the Ashkenazi community there had, as in Cairo, a small and short-lived…
-
Yiddish World WATCH: A Classic Yiddish Joke About Mothers-In-Law Will Still Surprise You
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The Yiddish Forward is producing a series of classic Yiddish jokes presented in Yiddish by Leana Jelen, a young Yiddish-speaking sign-language interpreter. In this classic a young bride starts off her relationship with her mother-in-law on an unusual note.
-
Culture How Yiddish Education Got Its Start In America, From Zionism To Socialism
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Are Jews a people or a religious community? This reductive question has been debated for more than two centuries, since the time of the Jewish Enlightenment. Its stakes are particularly high with regard to Jewish education. Religious subjects have an old and fixed place in the Jewish…
-
Yiddish World Want To Talk About Current Events In Yiddish? Here’s How.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Forverts readers, whether fluent Yiddish-speakers or students just beginning to master the language, often write in asking how one might say a certain word in the mame-loshn. Usually the word in question will be related to a topic in the news or an approaching holiday. Our standard…
-
Theater ‘Tevye Served Raw’ Captures Sholem Aleichem’s Genius In Two Languages
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Sholem Aleichem has been an unusually frequent topic of conversation in New York this summer, thanks to the critical and commercial success of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Yiddish-language production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” As anyone who has read Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories is well aware,…
-
Yiddish World WATCH: The REAL Gefilte Fish
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The gefilte fish you’ve been eating is nothing but a glorified fish patty. When making real gefilte fish, minced-fish stuffing is spooned into slices of carp, between the skin and the bone. Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter and Polish-born gefilte fish maven Sabina Barszap show how it’s done.
-
Opinion Do Your Kids and Grandkids Know Their Family History?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the summer of 2001, two psychologists at Emory University conducted a unique study, hoping to find the “secret” to raising resilient children. The researchers, Marshall Duke and Robin Feivush, suspected that children who had strong ties to previous generations were psychologically more intact. So they interviewed…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
- 2
Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
- 3
Opinion The Germans have a word for what’s happening in Trump’s America
- 4
Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward What does the election of Mark Carney mean for Canadian Jews and Israel?
-
Culture Why are Jews buried in a plain pine coffin?
-
Fast Forward Trump’s hostage envoy defends talks with Hamas: Meeting with ‘bad people is part of my job’
-
Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
