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 What HuffPo Meant With ‘Goy, Bye!’ Headline On Bannon — And Why Twitter Hated It
Huffington Post hailed the departure of Stephen Bannon from Trump’s White House with a provocative homepage headline of “Goy, Bye!” — and not everyone thought it was a great choice of words. The headline is a mash-up of several viral internet memes. It references “boy, bye” a dismissive line from the Beyonce song “Sorry” (delivered…
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Food WATCH: Learn How To Make 2 Perfect Beet Salads (In Yiddish!)
I hate beets. Even though I have some Russian blood through my mother’s side, I have never really gotten the appeal. Sure, they’re gorgeous to look at. Sure, they’re fun to cook with because they stain your hands like you’re a victim of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But delicious? No. However, this video by the…
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Yiddish World Yankel and Leah (Chapter 5): Glancing at the Eyes of the Gentile Cashier
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. He took up this thread when he called Miriam the shadchan’te the next morning. “I am still not sure about the way she looks,” Yankel told her. “I have no way of knowing. I can’t even remember from date to date what she looks like. I don’t think I…
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Community Watch Your Bleeping Language
Anthony Scaramucci may be history as far as the current White House is concerned, but the Pandora’s Box he opened in his obscenity-laced rant is not about to slam shut. Scaramucci obviously thought that The New Yorker was far too distinguished a publication to quote him directly. How wrong he was. Following the expose in…
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Culture New Folksbiene Play: Singing Against Trump’s America
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thirty-five years ago, Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld co-wrote the script for a musical called “The Golden Land” in honor of the 85th anniversary of the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper. The goal then was to depict, through Yiddish song, the first decades of Eastern European Jewish immigration…
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Yiddish World Yankel and Leah 4: Observing the NYC Skyline – And Her
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. “I’m available,” Leah said brightly. “Good,” he said, feeling an instant resistance to her enthusiasm. “I’ll see you at eight o’clock?” This time Yankel was able to borrow a different car. It was an almost-new Oldsmobile 98 Regency. “Beautiful car,” Leah said when he…
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Yiddish World What Did Poor Jews in the Shtetl Eat?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The extreme poverty that Jews once experienced in the cities and towns of Eastern Europe has been well documented, but what exactly was their diet like? According to the memoirs of Hirsh Abramovich, a Yiddish writer in pre-war Vilna, the Jews in Lithuania were probably the poorest…
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Yiddish World Video: Abraham Sutzkever on Poetry and Battling the Nazis
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever was born on July 15th, 1913 in Smorgon, a city in what is now Belarus. Known today primarily for being one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and for his wartime service as a Jewish Partisan in the forests…
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Fast Forward Trump’s hostage envoy defends talks with Hamas: Meeting with ‘bad people is part of my job’
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Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
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Yiddish World Who was the audience for the rhyming Purim play?
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