This is 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 Remembering More Than a Century of Bel Kaufman’s Rebellious Charm
Bel Kaufman, who has died on July 25 at the age of 103, once told an audience at Iona College in 2011: “You’re laughing. It’s a very good sound, the sound of survival.” Born Bella Kaufman in 1911, she is best known as author of the 1965 bestseller “Up the Down Staircase” a fictionalized version…
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The Schmooze Congress For Jewish Culture Leaves Its Office, But Not Its Mission
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. On July 17, the New York Times reported that the Congress for Jewish Culture, one of the few remaining Yiddish organizations in New York, would close their Manhattan office at the end of the month. The Congress’s office space, on Broadway just off 26th street, was…
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Culture The Origins of Yiddish: Part Tsvey
In last week’s column dealing with two recent articles about the origins of Eastern European Yiddish, I dwelled more on the first — Cherie Woodworth’s account of the “standard theory” most systematically worked out by the great Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich (1894–1969) and of some of its problematic aspects that have led to the adoption…
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News Origins of Yiddish Are Anything But Understood
Two recently posted articles in the Jewish Internet magazine Tablet provide an excellent introduction to anyone interested in the fascinating and problem-fraught field of Yiddish historical linguistics. One, by Cherie Woodworth, a scholar of Eastern European history who died last year, at the sadly young age of 46, first appeared in the journal Kritika in…
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News ‘Yiddishland’ Brings Diverse Group Together for Language and Culture
Mikhl Baran grew up with Yiddish. Now 91, he says of Oshmiany, the town in Lithuania where he was born, “Even the stones spoke Yiddish in our little shtetl.” Anthony Russell discovered the language in his thirties. A gay, African-American singer of opera, he stumbled across Yiddish cantorial singing during a mid-career crisis, and says…
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Books Yiddish Tomes Go Digital With DIY Scanner
It’s a scenario that the Yiddish writers of yore could never have predicted, and yet by which they likely would have been tickled: Today, their work is being digitized with the help of a home-made scanner built by a former Baptist from Indiana who lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. As of mid…
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Life Pepi Littman, Yiddish Drag King
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. The image of early 20th century itinerant member of the Broder Singers (and Yiddish drag king) Pepi ‘Peshe Khane’ Littman (1874-1930) seen here as ‘the griner bucher’ (the inexperienced bachelor)…
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The Schmooze Remembering Eli Wallach, Yiddish Theater Champion
Each time I met Eli Wallach — whom I had known for nearly 30 years (and always with his wife Anne Jackson at his side) — he greeted me warmly. Ever gracious, he’s sent handwritten ‘thank you’ notes following mentions in my column and a particularly sweet one after my review of their daughter Roberta’s performance…
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Opinion Right-wing insurrectionists tried to topple the German government in 1920 — it’s happening again in Trump’s America
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Theater Can a kinky new Yiddish musical resurrect a lost art — and one man who got spanked to death?
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Fast Forward Josh Shapiro’s Judaism was not why Kamala Harris snubbed him, new book claims
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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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