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…
In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, I’d like to share a little bit of our own family history during a period when Ukraine had hundreds of thriving Jewish communities. Growing up in Detroit, I heard many stories of what life was like for my family in dreym (in the old country) in Uman,…
Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz demonstrate how to make this tasty dish the way East European Jews did it for centuries and explain why it’s a Purim specialty.
Kyla Kupferstein Torres, whose mother was Black Jamaican, describes how her father's parents helped form her Jewish identity
This is one in a series of stories submitted by readers about their ancestors’ experiences growing up in Ukraine, during a time when it was a thriving center of Jewish life. My grandmother, Perl (we called her Paula) Braver or Braverman, was a fair-haired, blue-eyed woman who usually wore her long hair in braids atop…
