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
The Latest
-
Culture Looking Back: May 25, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Twenty-five-year-old Brooklyn resident Rose Moscowitz shot and killed her husband, Morris Moscowitz, after he tried to force her to become a prostitute. Moscowitz was initially a packer at a cigar factory, and her wages weren’t enough for her husband. He told her that he wanted her to sell her…
-
The Schmooze Yiddish Poems From Daughter to Mother
Sheva Zucker’s late mother Miriam was still attending a women’s Yiddish reading group in Winnipeg until just a few months before she died last January at age 97. So, even before her mother passed away, Zucker knew what the best way would be to memorialize her. “My mother was never a shul-goer, and davening is…
-
News Love and Translation
My mother and I used to fight about translation. These were not genteel disagreements but passionate, intemperate shouting matches. She would say: “That’s not what I meant! You twisted my words. Why can’t you just translate what I wrote?” I would say: “Because it’s not English; you can’t say that in English!” Or, “It’s too…
-
The Schmooze Yiddish Bookstore Gets a New Home
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. Over the last three years many Yiddish cultural organizations in New York have relocated to new homes. The Forverts and the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring sold their building on East 33rd Street in Manhattan and their tenants, including the League for Yiddish, the Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Yugntruf–Youth…
-
The Schmooze Yiddish Theater Takes on Capitalism
Since 2005, the New Worlds Theatre Project has been presenting classic Yiddish drama in English translation. This season they’re presenting a new English translation of H. Leivick’s 1921 play “Shmates,” here called “Welcome to America,” a naturalistic drama about the corrosive effects of American capitalism on a traditional Jewish immigrant family. In the notes to…
-
The Schmooze Why Yiddish Matters
On May 15, Speakers’ Lab and the Forward will present a moderated town hall-style event called “Now What? The Future of New Jewish Culture” at the 14th Street Y in downtown New York City. In preparation for the event, each panelist was asked to respond to a question related to his or her work. The…
-
Culture Looking Back: May 11, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward A Philadelphia sweatshop exploded into chaos as two sewing machine operators got into a vicious fight. As workers received their bundles of piecework in the morning at Dotkin’s shop on South Street, Louis Getor thought that Samuel Ravitz’s bundle was bigger than his, so he began complaining about it,…
-
Culture Living With Isaac Bashevis Singer
Who could live with Isaac Bashevis Singer? The sexual escapades of the most successful Yiddish writer in America — and the one whom most Yiddish literati loved to hate — were public knowledge, in large part because he himself built his reputation as a Casanova in his own fiction, where he was chased into the…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Reconstructionist leader to step down as head of movement riven by tension over anti-Zionism
-
Culture Alfred Dreyfus was not the man you think he was — and the history of Jews in France is a little different too
-
Yiddish World This synagogue ‘gets’ why you need Yiddish on Yom Hashoah
-
Culture A subreddit notorious for Holocaust denial is back online — now as a memorial
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
