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,…
Yiddish
The Latest
-
Culture When To Call a Schmuck a Schmuck
What or who is a Schmuck anyway?
-
Culture Looking Back: December 28, 2012
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…
-
News Isaiah Sheffer Remembered for Lullaby Voice and Enduring Legacy
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…
-
Culture The Sheynest Punim of Them All
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…
-
Culture How To Confuse a Gentile
Carol Russak writes from San Francisco: “My mother, who was from a small town near Chernovitz, used to use the expression daber nisht when she didn’t want to talk about a subject. I know that this means ‘Don’t talk,’ a combination of Hebrew daber and Yiddish nisht. Have you ever come across this expression?” I…
-
Culture Looking Back: December 14, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Chicago police arrested Samuel Kramer, the famed New York City pickpocket who was arrested months ago with gangsters “Lefty Louie” Rosenberg and “Gyp the Blood” Horowitz but managed to escape, after an anonymous tip informed them that Kramer was holed up in a local brothel. He was in bed when five…
-
The Schmooze Englander’s Inspiration
The Forverts’s Rukhl Schaechter once heard a Yiddish professor complain that his American students knew nothing about Stalin’s execution of 13 Soviet Jews, which took place in August 1952. Even more discouraging, he added, was their “complete lack of interest” in the Yiddish culture that once thrived in the Former Soviet Union. Two days before…
-
Culture Nathan Englander Play Explores Stalin-Era Tragedy
Every writer confronts the possibility of failure. There is no guarantee of being read or if read, of hitting the mark. But no writer expects to succeed and still fail, not through any fault of his own, but because his culture has been destroyed, his language suppressed and his readers murdered. Yet that is the…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Sports First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 2
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 3
News Christians are displaying menorahs in their windows post-Bondi Beach attack. Why some Jews object
- 4
Politics This politician refused to say ‘Happy Hanukkah,’ then blamed ‘political correctness’ for the backlash
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Pennsylvania principal to be fired over antisemitic voicemail: ‘They control the banks’
-
News Jews mobilized for Darfur 20 years ago. As violence surges again, where are they now?
-
Culture Righteous gentiles in the Holocaust were no ‘ordinary thing’
-
Letters My childhood echoes in newly released Shoah recordings
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
