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 Yiddish World, and for stories written in Yiddish,…
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 Yiddish World, and for stories written in Yiddish,…
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…
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…
Earlier, Harry Brod wrote about a couple of sayings with which he disagrees and why he always has a valid passport. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: I’ve been told that…
Summer Literary Seminars has announced its Abraham Sutzkever Translation Prize, marking the centennial of the birth of one of the most acclaimed Yiddish poets of the 20th century. “To me, he is the leading Yiddish poet, the epitome of Yiddish literature in the 20th century,” Mikhail Iossel said of Sutzkever. Iossel, a Soviet émigré and…
What or who is a Schmuck anyway?
100 Years Ago 1912 Each Friday evening in Manhattan, Nathan Friedman preaches against the “sinful Jews.” Formerly a Jew himself, Friedman is a missionary who invites Jews into his little storefront church and attempts to get them to convert to Christianity. When 17-year-old Paulina Rothberg stood outside Friedman’s church on a recent Friday night, she…
Most of America knew the great director, writer, actor and impresario Isaiah Sheffer through his deep lullaby of a voice, the one that guided them through his popular weekly syndicated radio show, “Selected Shorts.” But a bittersweet reminder of the many other gifts and achievements of the multitalented stage veteran was provided at the December…
When does a word borrowed from another language officially become a member in good standing of American English? Some might say that this happens only when it is included in the dictionaries. Yet new dictionaries are not published every day, and even when they come out, they often overlook words that have been regarded for…
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