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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Opinion How Do You Spell ‘Knaidel’?
Had Jack Lebewohl of the legendary 2nd Ave Deli been competing yesterday in the final round of 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee, he would have lost to the winner, 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali. The Jewish food maven would have misspelled the winning word: ‘knaidel’. “The thing is, we spell it k-n-e-i-d-e-l,” the deli man said in…
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Breaking News Boy Wins National Spelling Bee With Yiddish ‘Knaidel’
An Indian American boy from New York won a national spelling contest thanks to his ability to correctly spell the word knaidel, a Yiddish-derived word for a traditional Jewish dumpling. Arvind Mahankali, 13, of Bayside Hills, N.Y., beat 10 other finalists at the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee held Thursday in Oxon Hill, Md. He…
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News Lay-Offs Bring Curtain Down on Jewish Era at Village Voice
For much of its existence, the Village Voice was a paper where you could call a momzer a momzer and use just that term to do it. But the news in May that the out-of-town momzers who own the Voice had fired the paper’s last remaining signature writers — Michael Feingold, Michael Musto and Robert…
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The Schmooze Jewish Languages from Bukhori to Juhuri
When asked to name Jewish languages, most people would say Hebrew and Yiddish. Some might also mention Ladino or Aramaic. It’s unlikely that they would know about Juhuri, Bukhori and Judeo-Median — and that is precisely why the Jewish Languages Project of the Endangered Language Alliance has come into being. Juhuri, Bukhori and Judeo-Median are…
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Culture A Very Yiddish Take on the Star Spangled Banner
Frieda Danziger of Manhattan writes to ask whether I have ever encountered the Yiddish term farfl un lokshn as a comical or disparaging way of referring to the Stars and Stripes. I have, once, in a poem by Abraham Liessin, a well-known Yiddish poet. Liessin, who was born in Russia in 1872 and came to…
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Culture Third Century Synagogue Unearthed in Turkey
1913 •100 years ago Nursery’s heartbreaking scenes A black sign hanging on an old three-story house on the Lower East Side’s Madison Street has written on it, in golden letters: “Hebrew Day Nursery.” This means that inside is a place where they keep babies for the day while their mothers are at work. What sad…
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The Schmooze Now You Can Learn Yiddish From a Robot
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translation by Ezra Glinter. “Good morning. My name is Nomy. I am a girl. Good morning, Moby! He is a robot.” So begins the first section of YiddishPOP, a new educational website featuring animated videos whose main character is a robot. It’s the result of a…
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Culture A New York Jewish Man Tries To Commit Suicide by Cocaine
1913 •100 years ago Cocaine, Suicide and Incest Why did Dr. Jacob Haas attempt to take his own life in such a grotesque manner? Last Tuesday, Haas ingested 10 grams of cocaine and slashed his own throat, but missed the jugular and managed to remain alive after Meyer Wolf, a doctor who lives a few…
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