This week, you can watch klezmer sensations Frank London, Sarah Gordon and Lorin Sklamberg preparing some favorite Hanukkah dishes in the kitchen, singing while they work. The program, called ESN, was produced by the National Yiddish Theater – Folksbiene. It will be streaming until the last day of Hanukkah, December 6. The inspiration to put…
A new video has been released, featuring the Brazilian composer and singer Tania Grinberg singing the Yiddish Hanukkah song, “Akht likhtlekh” (Eight Candles). The song, which was written by the late Yiddish poet and songwriter, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, has a folksy quality to it and is easy enough for kids to learn. The video, which was…
The U.S.’s largest annual Yiddish culture festival, Yiddish New York, is once again going to be conducted online, enabling people all over the globe to participate in its wide variety of workshops and lectures. The festival will take place from December 25 to December 30, 2021. Among the many sessions participants can choose to attend…
This week, a video of a new Yiddish song, Di Veln (The Tempest Breakers), was posted on YouTube, performed by singer-songwriter Polina Shepherd, with piano accompaniment. The lyrics are by the late expressionist poet, Abraham Nahum Stencl, and the melody and arrangement – by Shepherd herself. The video was produced by the Forverts. Abraham Nahum…
On Wednesday, December 8, at 1 pm ET, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will lead a Zoom tour of its exhibit depicting pre-war Vilna as seen through the eyes of a Jewish teenage girl. The exhibit, called “Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl”, is based on an autobiography that Beba Epstein,…
It’s that time of year again: no matter which supermarket you enter or storefront you pass by, it’s the same old Christmas carols on the PA system. But what if you heard them in Yiddish, celebrating Hanukkah instead? It may sound gimmicky but in his debut album, “Yiddish Hanukkah Carols”, Orthodox singer-songwriter Yossi Desser has…
Yoel Matveyev, the Forverts’ correspondent in Russia, was sitting alone in a Moscow train station in the middle of the night, when he suddenly got the inspiration to translate the Russian song, “Nadezhda”, about two lovers separated by a long and difficult journey, into Yiddish. Although the song was written in 1971, it remains hugely…
As I was browsing books written about Soviet-Yiddish writers recently in the National Library of Russia, in St. Petersburg, I serendipitously found a 36-page Yiddish pamphlet called “Seyfer hagoyroles” [book of fortune-telling], which described a complex magical method for predicting the future. The book concludes with several alchemical recipes. It was clear that no one…
A new bilingual edition of the classic Yiddish children’s book, “The Clever Little Tailor”, will be celebrated at an online book party this Sunday, November 17 at 4 pm EST. The event is free of charge. The book, by the children’s writer and Yiddish cultural activist, Solomon Simon (1895-1970), was released by Kinder-Loshn Publications, a…
According to a verdict by the Tel Aviv Local Affairs Court, the popular Yiddish cultural center and library,”Yung Yidish”, located inside the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, will be forced to close its doors by December 5, 2021. The eviction is part of a grand plan by the city to shut down the huge station…
Abraham Sutzkever From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony Edited and translated by Justin D. Cammy Afterword by Justin D. Cammy and Avraham Novershtern McGill-Queen’s University Press (2021), 488 pp. Although Abraham (Avrom, in Yiddish) Sutzkever is usually referred to as one of the greatest Yiddish poets in the twentieth-century, he also played…
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