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…
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…
The point that has been missed in the great knaidel (knaydel? kneidel? kneydl?) controversy is that the real problem isn’t the spelling of Yiddish words in Latin characters. It’s the spelling of English words in Latin characters. In the Hebrew characters that are native to it, Yiddish has been, for the most part, ever since…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 years ago 1913 The American-Romanian Jewish Emancipation Committee held a gala affair at the Waldorf…
Herman Broder is a gangly loser who’s won the biggest prize of all: his life. After surviving the Nazi onslaught in Poland by hiding in a haystack, he emigrates to America — specifically, Coney Island — with the gentile Polish woman who hid him, and who is now his wife. This is the setting of…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 years ago 1913 Finally, the Haman of Ellis Island has met his end. Now that…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. On May 18 writer, activist and longtime Forverts columnist Tsirl Steingart died in a car accident in Palm Beach, Florida. She was 97 years old. Steingart was born March 11, 1916 in Bialystok, where she was an active participant in the Bundist…
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 years ago 1913 Joseph Hoffman, head of a gang of schnorrers, was sentenced to six…
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…
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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