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
The Latest
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Culture A Klezmerizing Performer
As decades roll, it is becoming increasingly clear that the klezmer revival of the late 1970s was neither a fleeting fad nor a bout of nostalgia; it was a serious identity exploration. The longevity and evolution of certain early groups — The Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band — is telling enough. Yet, the most important…
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Culture A Nebbish Is Born
Last week’s column left you hanging in suspense about the Yiddish word nebekh, whose last consonant is pronounced like the “ch” in “Bach.” Forward reader Howard Schranz, you will recall, spoke of having it “thrown his way” after his father’s death when he was a child, and he wanted to know whether it meant, as…
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Culture Three-Timing Jewish Hubby Faces the Music
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 illluminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 New York City cigar maker Charles Weiss may not look…
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Israel News Harlem’s Good Ol’ Days
Video: Nate Lavey Just south of the bustle of Harlem’s famed 125th Street corridor, a mix of brownstones and churches in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park neighborhood prospers today as home to a large working-class black population. But walk down these streets with John T. Reddick, and he will show you the remnants, still-visible, of the…
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Culture Abbreviate This!
Howard Schranz wants to know the origin and exact meaning of the Yiddish word nebekh. “When I was 11,” he writes, “after my father, a”h, died, I heard a lot of nebekh thrown my way. I know it meant something like, ‘It’s pitiful,’ and I quickly tired of being called that. Show some sympathy if…
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Culture Looking Back: January 18, 2013
100 Years Ago 1913 One of our local, homegrown Jewish gangsters from New York City’s East Side, Joseph Tablinsky, was arrested on the charge of horse thievery. Sam Bernstein, who owns a stable on Cherry Street, where two horses worth about $400 recently went missing, brought the charges. The horses were later found in Berish…
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The Schmooze Setting ‘Yellow Ticket’ to Music
Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals has experience scoring documentary and feature films. But earlier this year she faced an unusual challenge when she was approached by the Washington Jewish Music Festival to score a 1918 feature-length silent film called “The Yellow Ticket.” Unlike other scoring jobs, where her focus was mainly on heightening viewers’ experience of…
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Culture Looking Back: January 4, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 After hearing screams coming from a hut on the lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a boy ran to a nearby police officer and told him something was wrong. The officer ran to the hut, where he found a young woman who had been shot three times in the back and once…
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