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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Culture Our Favorite Hanukkah Toy Was Actually a Non-Jewish Irish Gambling Game
With the arrival of Hanukkah comes the reemergence of dreidels from closets, drawers and cupboards. These tops are a beloved part of the holiday — but where did they actually come from? Like many things in Jewish history, the story that most of us heard about dreidels as children is entirely ahistorical. There were no…
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Israel News The Israeli Yiddish Dog Squad That’s Taking Bite Out of Terror
An elite squad of security dogs has joined the war on the new wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel — and they know Yiddish. I recently spent an afternoon with the Israel Civilian K9 Unit to get a first-hand look at these four-legged soldiers. “Zitz!” the private unit’s founder Mike Guzofsky barked at a…
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Forward 50 2015 Zalmen Mlotek
Zalmen Mlotek, 64, has been involved in Yiddish culture practically since before he was born. His mother, Chana Mlotek, who died in 2013, was a folk song researcher, anthologist and long-serving chief archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. His father, Joseph Mlotek, was a writer, educator and cultural activist who served as the…
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Music Excavating Lost Pre-War Klezmer Recordings
Ever since the beginning of the klezmer revival in the 1970s, music critics and musicians have wondered just how close to its European roots the music they were performing is. The musicians of the 1970s had access to only two sources from which to learn: the few still-living musicians, such as clarinetist Dave Tarras, and…
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The Schmooze How ‘Bas Kol’ Became a Viral Hasidic Hit
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts It’s rare today for a Yiddish song to become a sensation. It’s even more rare for one to go viral on Facebook and Twitter. But that’s just what happened recently with the new music video for Chaim Shlomo Mayes (Mayesz)’s dance-hit “Bas-Kol” (Divine…
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Culture Forward Archives Are Now Digitized And Searchable
More than a century of Jewish life in America, reported in Yiddish, will soon be accessible through a searchable online database. The entire run of the Forverts newspaper — the most widely read Jewish newspaper in the world for much of the 20th century — will become part of the Historical Jewish Press Project, known…
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Culture Yiddish Breathes New Life Into ‘Death of a Salesman’
Is “Death of a Salesman” a Jewish play? Is Willy Loman, its main character, Jewish? The question has been asked almost since “Salesman” was first produced, in 1949. Loman’s precarious life was the fate of many Jews in the 20th century, and playwright Arthur Miller — whose centenary is being celebrated this month — was…
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News Newcomers Transform Dying Upper Manhattan Synagogues Into Hot Spots
A version of this article first appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts For years, the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol of Washington Heights, a large 99-year old Orthodox synagogue on 175th Street and Wadsworth Avenue, had barely been able to attract a minyan, the quorum of ten men required for worship. The 6 or 7 gray-haired veterans…
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Culture Barbra Streisand recorded here — and so did Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon and, uh, The Village People
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Fast Forward Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to helm EPA, says he received bomb threat with ‘pro-Palestinian themed message’
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Opinion We can be thankful this year — and Jewish wisdom can help
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