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
-
Opinion Why Donald Trump’s ‘Schlonged’ Doesn’t Matter — and Why That Fact Matters
For a time in the early 1980s I was unemployed in Los Angeles and watched a lot of daytime TV. One day I was watching a rerun of “The Newlywed Game,” a quiz show that asked contestants about their spouses’ habits to see how well they knew each other. In this segment, the question was:…
-
Culture The 7 Most Famous Uses of ‘Schlong’ Before Donald Trump
Donald Trump’s use of the term “schlonged” may have been the most recent example of a Yiddish curse hitting the mainstream. But it’s hardly the first. In fact, the term schlong has been swinging around pop culture for quite a while. Here are seven of the most noteworthy uses of the (rather unpleasant) term: 1969…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
- 2
Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
- 3
Opinion The Germans have a word for what’s happening in Trump’s America
- 4
Opinion Trump’s treasury secretary is about to make a catastrophically bad move on Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Why are Jews buried in a plain pine coffin?
-
Fast Forward Trump’s hostage envoy defends talks with Hamas: Meeting with ‘bad people is part of my job’
-
Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
-
Yiddish World Who was the audience for the rhyming Purim play?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
