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
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Culture From Esperanza to Shprintze
Bert Horwitz writes from Asheville, N.C.: “The outcome of a dispute between me and my wife was: ‘Let’s ask Philologos.’ In Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Tevye the Milkman,’ one of Tevye’s daughters is named Shprintze — a name my wife claimed derived from Latin or Spanish Esperanza, meaning ‘hope.’ I said that there are no Latin- or…
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Culture Looking Back: April 20, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Fifteen minutes after the end of a matinee performance of “Her First Child,” Liptzin Theater manager Michael Mintz committed suicide on the theater’s stage. Mintz had been helping his wife, famed actress Kenny Liptzin, prepare for the evening performance of “Mirele Efros” at a theater in New Jersey. He…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Shlomo Carlebach in Poland
A version of this post originally appeared in Yiddish. Filmmaker Menachem Daum, whose 2004 documentary, “Hiding and Seeking,” portrayed his journey to Poland to search for the peasant family that rescued his father-in-law during the Holocaust, has been busy at work on his next project: a film about Shlomo Carlebach’s historic concert tour of Poland…
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Culture Looking Back: April 13, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward When Sarah Ehrlich arrived at her Bronx home, she heard a noise in the upstairs bedroom. Fully aware that no one in her family should have been home at the time, she realized that it must have been a burglar. “Who’s there?” she yelled. A voice called out from…
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The Schmooze Q&A: Jesse Aaron Cohen on Tanlines and Yiddish
By day, as photo and film archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Jesse Aaron Cohen tends to thousands of images of bygone Jewish culture. By night, he’s half of the Brooklyn-based “existential pop” duo Tanlines, whose new album, “Mixed Emotions,” will sound “absolutely stupendous when you’re driving during the daytime with your windows…
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Culture Difference Between a Slob and a ‘Zhlob’
Judith Ronat writes from Kfar Saba in Israel: “The etymologies in my dictionary don’t support any connection, but I would like to hear your opinion. Is there any connection between the Yiddish word zhlob and the English ‘slob’?” There is a connection, but it’s not etymological. Rather, it’s that English “slob” has influenced the meaning…
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The Schmooze Yiddish Theater on PBS
It is no small feat to recreate the world and emotions of a bygone era. But in his astonishing show celebrating his grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who were superstars of the Yiddish theater, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has done it. And it is a joy. PBS’s “Great Performances” is broadcasting “The Thomashefskys: Music and…
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The Schmooze Q&A: Yiddish Singer Elmore James
When you Google Elmore James the first hits that pop up refer to a blues singer from the 1940s. That is not the same Elmore James who stars in the National Yiddish Theatre — Folksbiene production of “Soul to Soul.” But Yiddish-singing James, 57, thinks the Southern bluesman would see similarities between what the two…
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