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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The Schmooze The Luck of the Yiddish: ‘Godot’ At First Irish NYC Theater Fest
Mingling with the guests at the Origins First Irish Theatre Festival Launch party I spotted Yoel and Avram Weisshauss — two bearded Satmars. I asked in Yiddish: “Vos epes. farvos zaynd ir do?” (“Why are you here?”) Both answered me with a Yiddish-style shrug. Held at Mutual of America’s Park Avenue headquarters and hosted by its…
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The Schmooze WATCH: Bubbe Schools You in Yiddish
You will laugh. You will cry. You will kvell. The Los Angeles Jewish Home has put together a cute video of some of their best bubbes and zaydes explaining the meaning of Yiddish words. “Yiddish: Part One” (implying, we hope, a “Part Two”) enlightens viewers on how to use the usual suspects — mentsh, shvitz, shmuck…
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Life Throwback Thursday: Yiddish Novelist Takes On Stalin’s Terror
Copyright Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Vera Hacken was the Odessa-born memoirist of a Czernowitz childhood, and an early novelist of the intricacies of life under the Soviet Union’s police state apparatus — but much…
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News When Jews — and Everyone Else — Learned How To Have Fun
Beth Kissileff writes: “A rabbi recently said to me that there is no word for ‘fun’ in any Jewish language because Judaism is purpose and goal oriented. I said, ‘But there is keyf in Hebrew,’ and he said, ‘No, that’s from Arabic.’ Was the rabbi right?” On first thought, he would appear to be. If…
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The Schmooze Yiddish Supergroup Pays Homage to Nathan ‘Prince’ Nazaroff
Photo: Fumie Suzuki So, there in a gazebo on the boardwalk in Coney Island are The Brothers Nazaroff, taking refuge from the steamy afternoon sun. It is 92 degrees and horribly humid outside as the five Nazaroffs start playing and singing. A Hungarian documentary crew is shooting with two cameras as the brothers sing “Lucky…
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Israel News After 30 Years, First Klezmer Festival Founder Says ‘Mission Accomplished’
Thirty years ago, klezmer music was a dying art, played mostly by aging musicians at the occasional wedding or bar mitzvah. That started changing in the late 1970s with the klezmer revival, and especially with KlezKamp, one of the first klezmer festivals and a training ground for new artists. Now, KlezKamp, the annual festival of…
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Culture Yiddish Tango Is Irresistible Musical Hybrid
(JTA) — The music that packs the Skirball Cultural Center’s stately courtyard – Yiddish tango – is a musical hybrid twice over. On the tango side, it is a blend of African-born rhythms and a potpourri of European music styles. On the Yiddish side, it combines mournful liturgical melodies with folk songs. Tango, too, is…
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Life How One Yiddish Actress Was Blocked From Stardom
Actress Esther Nersolavska // Copyright Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. In 1965, a short two column item at the bottom left corner of page ten of the Forverts announced the funeral of Esther Nadya Neroslavska,…
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