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
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Culture The People of the Books
This column seems recently to have aroused in many of you questions about Yiddish words or phrases that you remember hearing long ago from parents or grandparents. The latest such query comes from Marcia Bender of Forest Hills, Queens. She asks: “When my grandmother was very old, I used to help her light the Sabbath…
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Food Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish Food Writer
Editor’s Note: The Beet-Eating Heeb is the nom de plume of Jeffrey Cohan, a former journalist in Forest Hills, PA. He also blogs about Judaism and veganism on his own website. Somewhere in the higher realms, Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer is observing his 110th birthday today. And it would be a pity if his…
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The Schmooze Theaters Paved With Gold
When my parents landed in New York in 1947 they were assigned a case worker. I’m not sure who did the assigning, but I remember my father saying how puzzled he was. “Case” was German for cheese, and he didn’t understand why he needed a cheese worker. My parents didn’t tell many stories about their…
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The Schmooze ‘Selected Shorts’ Host Isaiah Sheffer Dies at 76
Radio personality Isaiah Sheffer died today in New York at age 76. Sheffer was co-founder and artistic director of the performing art center Symphony Space on the upper west side of Manhattan, and was known nationally as the long time host of the public radio series “Selected Shorts,” which began in 1985. Sheffer started Symphony…
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Culture Yiddish Offers Many Options for Flu Season
Three related queries from readers have recently arrived in my mailbox. The first comes from Robin Dershow of Minneapolis, who writes: “My late mother would use the expressions ‘God forbid’ and kinehore, but for the worst of the worst cases, she used something that sounded to me as a child like ‘Godsilapeten.’ I can’t find…
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Opinion Lingo of the Sarah Silverman Controversy
The Jewish Press set off a firestorm last week when it published An Open Letter to Sarah Silverman by Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt. The Orthodox author criticized the comedian’s politics, vulgar presentation style, and the fact that she remains childless. As a linguist, what I found most interesting about this article was the language. By looking…
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Culture The New Testament Sounds Odd in Yiddish
In my September 6 column about a Yiddish translation of the Qur’an, I observed that many of the singular effects created by translating the sacred scriptures of Islam, a religion closely linked to Judaism, into an intensely Jewish language like Yiddish would no doubt be found in a Yiddish translation of the Christian New Testament,…
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Culture Looking Back: October 12, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Speaking from the witness stand, Jack Rose dropped a bomb at the Charles Becker trial. Rose, a New York City gambler, said Becker told him that Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal had to be killed. Rose then recounted the story of Rosenthal’s murder in vivid terms. Making matters worse for Becker, a Jewish…
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