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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Culture In Poland, Artistic Excavations Reveal a Lost World of Jews
This article, which originally appeared in the Forverts, is one of a four-part series by Barbara Finkelstein about her recent trip to Poland. The Grodzka Gate Centre in the city of Lublin came into being in the early 1990s, when Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, a physics student, set out to establish an independent theater in the Grodzka…
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Culture How I Reunited My Holocaust Survivor Father With His Long Lost Neighbor
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Jerzy “Jurek” Skarżyński had been up half the night. The next day he was going to meet the daughter and grandson of a Jewish man who once lived in Uchanie, his home village, and his mind would not slow down. Jurek, a Polish Christian, had not spoken…
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Community With Trump as President Elect, Yiddish Literature Is More Important than Ever
Donald Trump has won the presidency, but I am not quitting my day job. Like many eight year-olds, I had mapped out a career plan so baroque that it would involve multiple stages. In my lithe youth, I would be a ballerina. After that, a stateswoman; maybe president. Finally, when I had acquired wisdom and…
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The Schmooze WATCH: Amazing Yiddish Rendition of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
Leonard Cohen died exactly a year ago on November 7, 2016. In honor of his yarzheit, or the anniversary of his death, the Forward is proud to reprise this story and video of an amazing version of ‘Hallelujah’ in Yiddish. The Berlin-based singer-songwriter and “punk-Klezmer” musician Daniel Kahn is one of the most innovative performers…
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News The Jewish Education of Jessye Stein — on a South Dakota Indian Reservation
One day, Jessye Stein, a computer teacher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was trying to persuade a student to return to his Lakota language class when the young man suddenly posed an unexpected question. “He asked me where I come from, where my people come from and what my ancestral language…
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Yiddish World The Making Of The First Female Hasidic Civic Court Judge
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the final countdown before the election, Ruchie Freier was still uncertain whether she would win the race for Civil Court Judge. But win she did, and starting in January 2017, she’ll become the first Hasidic woman ever elected to this high position. Sipping hot tea with…
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Culture Why Yiddish Is Gaining Traction in Secular Households
There once was a place known as Yiddish Land. It wasn’t a country. In fact, it lived and breathed for a thousand years in total disregard for the invisible borders sovereign nations fought and died over. Its citizens — German Jews, Polish Jews, Jews throughout Central Europe and across the world — numbered nearly 12…
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Community Adapting ‘Boy Books’ and ‘Girl Books’ for a Progressive, Yiddish-Speaking Family
In my latest blog post, I complained about the gendered struggles I face, as a liberal Yiddish-speaking father, while reading and singing Yiddish children’s books and songs to my son. On one hand, I’m faced with a mother-oriented literature that erases my own lived experience as a father who changes diapers, cooks meals, brings his…
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