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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News A Terrible Blood Bath
It’s almost impossible to believe, but it happened. War has been declared. The great powers began a terrible blood bath. If the flames are not extinguished right away, the war will be the most terrible, the worst in human history. Think about what happens next. None of the peoples caught up in the war have…
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News My Beloved America, I Don’t Recognize You!
When I came here I was a very young man. Many years have passed. I sometimes think it was only yesterday that I arrived here; but often that day feels so far away— like a half forgotten dream. I sometimes feel as if I’d been born here having spent my most interesting years here. It…
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The Schmooze ‘Making Stalin Laugh’ Finds Humor in Tragedy
Photo: Simon Annand/JW3 The second act of David Schneider’s new play, “Making Stalin Laugh,” opens in 1935, the year the Moscow State Yiddish Theater decided to mount a production of “King Lear” with its legendary director Solomon Mikhoels as the lead. Lear, Mikhoels tells the cast as the party apparatchiki watch over his rehearsal, is…
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Breaking News Yiddish Chit-Chat Tapes Force Mistrial in Sprawling New York Corruption Case
(Reuters) — A U.S. judge declared a mistrial in the case against a New York state senator accused of trying to buy his way onto the Republican ticket in the 2013 New York City mayoral race, lawyers in the case said. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains, New York, scuttled the trial of…
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Breaking News Wiretapped Yiddish Small Talk Could Derail Wideranging N.Y. Corruption Trial
A sprawling New York state corruption trial could reportedly be seriously delayed or even derailed by some 300 recordings of an upstate Hasidic wheeler-dealer chatting in Yiddish. A federal judge is considering his options after defense lawyers for disgraced state Sen. Malcolm Smith complained that they had not had a chance to listen to the…
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News How Do You Talk Dirty in Yiddish?
Have you ever wondered how you might say “quickie” in Yiddish? Or maybe “sugar daddy” or “one-night stand”? You wouldn’t be the first. In 60 years of researching the Yiddish language, linguist Mordkhe Schaechter collected vocabulary on every aspect of human life and developed vocabulary lists for many specialized subjects not covered in detail by…
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Opinion Alexander Imich, Czar’s Last Bar Mitzvah Boy
Alexander Imich at 111 years old / Guinness Book of World Records Ray Bradbury, in his classic 1955 story “The Last, the Very Last,” has a child encounter a 108-year-old man believed to be the last known Civil War veteran. The story, reworked as a chapter in his novel Dandelion Wine, introduces the veteran to…
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The Schmooze ‘Fiddler’ Lyricist Sheldon Harnick Turns 90
“The sad thing is that Joe Stein and Jerry Bock can’t be part of this celebration,” mused lyricist Sheldon Harnick at his 90th birthday bash hosted on June 2 by Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a principal of Bernstein Global Management at its New York City headquarters. It was Stein who wrote the book, and Bock who wrote…
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