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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Yiddish World Recalling The Unsavory Characters Of Jewish History, From ‘Prophets’ To Murderers
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press By Eddy Portnoy Stanford University Press, 280 pages $15.25 When the study of Jewish history began in the 19th century, it had two goals: To create an objective picture of the Jewish past and to…
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Culture Swedish Music Videos Teach Children Yiddish
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thanks to Yiddish’s status as an official minority language in Sweden, the Scandinavian nation finances many initiatives to encourage its use. Besides the yearly international Yiddish seminar, a program sponsored by the Yiddish authority in which lecturers and performers from around the world speak to Sweden’s Jewish…
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Culture Uriel Weinreich’s 50th Yahrzeit Honored With Special Issue Of Linguistics Journal
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Although he is better known in the Yiddish cultural world for his landmark textbook “College Yiddish” and his “Modern English-Yiddish/Yiddish-English Dictionary”, Uriel Weinreich was also a pioneer in the field of sociolinguistics. Even today, 50 years after his tragic death from cancer at the age of 40,…
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Yiddish World VIDEO: Avrom Karpinovitch, Writer, Remembers Jewish Criminals In Vilna
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Vilna writer Avrom Karpinovitch dedicated his life to describing the colorful personalities of the lower class and criminal element of his city on the eve of the Holocaust. In this video he tells us about Tall Tamara, the Jewish streetwalker; Avrom Mosevski, the glutton; and Gedalke the…
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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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