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 How The Russian Revolution Of 1917 Transformed The Jewish People Forever
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I love attending academic conferences. As I sit there, taking notes, I feel like I’m back in college, eagerly soaking up facts and analyses provided by the invited scholars. It’s also an opportunity to chat with fellow participants who happen to share my interests. Sometimes, though, a…
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News Child Holocaust Survivors From Same Polish Town Meet In ‘Miracle’ Reunion
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Two weeks ago I happened to witness a small miracle. As a Jerusalem resident this year, I was intrigued to learn that there was an international conference of Jews who had survived the Holocaust as young children taking place not far from my home. Since my own…
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Yiddish World Erotic Yiddish Poet Celia Dropkin’s Translator Discussed Her Complex Work On The Radio
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The daring and often disturbing erotic poetry of Celia Dropkin has become more accessible in recent years, thanks to the appearance, in 2014, of first collection of her works in English translation. That collection, The Acrobat, led to wider interest in Dropkin’s poetry, partially inspiring the creation…
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Culture Why My Polish High School Teaches Yiddish
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Few people know that there’s a high school in Warsaw that teaches Yiddish. In fact, it’s probably the only one in all of Europe that does. I know because I recently graduated from there and I was one of its Yiddish students. This isn’t a Jewish school….
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Yiddish World Forverts Editorial: What’s Our Agenda?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As editor of the Forverts, most of the questions I get from readers involve either the price of an obituary or a request to decipher a handwritten postcard written by a deceased relative. Recently, though, I got an email with a very different sort of question: “I’d…
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Music LISTEN: Arik Einstein’s Yiddish Song “Meydele”
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Arik Einstein was the single most important figure in the rise of Israeli rock-music, as important to Israelis as Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and the Beatles were to Americans. Although known exclusively for his songs in Hebrew, Einstein did record one song in Yiddish in 1971, a…
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Yiddish World WATCH: Shira Gorshman, Yiddish Writer Who Portrayed Women As Folk Heroes, Discusses Her Life
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In this video, master storyteller Shira Gorshman describes her impoverished childhood in a Lithuanian shtetl. She vividly describes her brutal stepfather, her very competent but combative grandmother and her adoring grandfather, who was the first person to introduce her to the beauty of the outdoors. Imbued with…
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Forward 50 2017 Sandra Fox
The Feminist Yiddish Podcast Host Sandy Fox wanted to listen to a Yiddish-language podcast for people like herself. A young, feminist Yiddish speaker with friends and colleagues spread widely across religious and political divides, this New York University graduate student followed the do-it-yourself ethos of her generation and created “Vaybertaytsh,” the world’s first feminist Yiddish…
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Culture At 95, Shaindel Schreiber is still dispensing babka and advice on the Lower East Side
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