Yisroel Leshes, Assistant Cantor at Lincoln Square Synagogue, has released a video of the African-American spiritual “Go Down, Moses” in Yiddish – with a jazzy twist. Leshes has previously infused Yiddish songs with jazz elements, as in his release of the song “Younger World”. In this video, he performs “Go Down, Moses” during a live…
The photographs of Ukrainian children clutching stuffed animals, peering through train windows, and tearfully hugging their fathers—who are also weeping—as they flee their war-torn homeland, are not only heartbreaking. For American Jews with long memories of the destruction of East European Jewish culture in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian lands, it also feels like a nauseating…
This is a translation from the story written in Hasidic Yiddish. Read the original here. When I was a kid, I used to read stories late at night on Fridays about the great Hasidic tzadikim, the righteous ones. Some of these stories were about the lamed-vovniks, the 36 hidden tzadikim among us on whose merits…
When I was a child, I was always intrigued by the ornate, slightly crooked silver candlesticks in my aunt’s dining room, maybe because they stood out from the otherwise clean, modern decor. At some point, my aunt told me they had belonged to her grandmother – my great-grandmother. After I got married, my aunt, who…
On March 6, when the horror and shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were still intensely fresh, the Forverts ran an article about Kropyvnytskyi-born Jewish artist Issachar Ber Ryback. I was instantly hooked by the accompanying image: an Old World Jewish craftsman, laboring in a candle-lit workshop. When I began to read through the Yiddish…
This photo is of my paternal grandparents, Itche Mayer and Ruda Fuks. I was told that my grandfather wrote commentary on religious texts but he earned a living as a sign painter, and also sculpted lions and eagles for synagogues. What’s unusual about this picture is that it seems to be a candid portrait during…
In the last few years, the Yiddish world has seen initiatives like Yiddish Duolingo, Yiddish Harry Potter and Yiddish TikTok attract new generations of Yiddishists. Starting in May, an online summer Yiddish intensive called Queer Yiddish Camp joins this new wave. Summer Yiddish intensives, like those run by YIVO and the Yiddish Book Center, hold…
The late filmmaker Menachem Daum described two Polands in this essay — one of inclusivity, another of ethnic nationalism
As Russia’s bloodletting in Ukraine continues, we have begun sharing stories about the great contribution that Ukrainian Jews have made to our rich Jewish culture and to the world at large. Today we’ll focus on the renowned avant-garde Jewish painter Issachar Ber Ryback, whose lithographs and paintings portrayed traditional Jewish life in the Ukrainian shtetl,…
From the editor: On August 26, 1971, the Forverts published this article in Yiddish by Sholom Secunda, the prolific composer of hits like “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn” and “Dona Dona”. In it, he describes why he nearly cancelled going to a concert of his songs, performed by campers at the Yiddish summer camp, Camp Hemshekh….
One afternoon, when I was eight years old, my father and I traveled by train to a recording studio in Manhattan. My father was the khazn, or cantor, at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center. We were making a record together with Sholom Secunda, the composer of the song “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn”. The plan was…
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