Sweden’s national theater, the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, has commissioned the Congress for Jewish Culture to stage Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish on November 13 and 14. This will be the first Yiddish production in the history of Sweden’s national stage for “spoken drama”, a venerable institution founded in 1788. All…
I’ve recently pondered: “When is a person old enough to flavor one’s language with Yiddish expressions?” There have been many times where a Yiddish expression was so on-target that I would use it, but I would always attribute it to my mother or grandmother, implying that Yiddish was only a language for older folks, as…
“Bist farshtumt.” (“You’re muted.”) “Tsind on dayn mikrofon.” (“Turn on your microphone.”) And of course: “Ot iz mayn kats. Zog: ‘sholem-aleykhem,’ ketsele!” (“Here’s my cat. Say hi, kitty!”) If you’ve ever taken part in one of the various Yiddish shmueskrayzn (conversation groups) that have sprouted up on the Internet since the beginning of the pandemic,…
Yiddish enthusiasts in the San Diego, California region will soon have a meeting place of their own for events related to the Yiddish language and culture. The Yiddish Arts and Academics Association of North America, or YAAANA, has rented a space at 1128 Wall Street in La Jolla, a seaside neighborhood of San Diego. The…
Read this article in Yiddish. As seen in a new exhibit at the Museum at Eldridge Street, artist Debra Olin has created large format monoprint collages that explore Jewish folkloric superstitions and religious practices, particularly those of women in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Olin based her art on the information she gleaned from an…
If you’d like to learn or brush up on your knowledge of Yiddish Hanukkah songs, you might consider joining an online workshop and sing-along, led by the conductor of the Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus, Binyumen Schaechter. Schaechter is a brother of Forverts editor, Rukhl Schaechter. Sessions will take place on November 7 and 14, culminating in…
Read this article in Yiddish The world has changed massively in five years – from new political movements to a global pandemic, and now your Yiddish can keep up with it. Five years after the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary was first published, comes a revised and expanded second edition. Both versions, edited by Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Dr….
The Yiddish actor, Jacob Lewin, who lives in Los Angeles, is one of the few Jews left who actually remembers what life was like in the Lodz Ghetto. In 2004, Miri Koral, the director of the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language, interviewed him in Yiddish about his life both during and after the…
For Indigenous People’s Day, read this translated excerpt of the poem “Hatuey” by the Cuban Yiddish author, Osher Penn.
Samuel J. Spinner Jewish Primitivism Stanford University Press, 272 pp. According to the Russian־Jewish art critic, Abram Efros (1888-1954), modern Jewish art needs to embody two principles: European modernism and Jewish folk art. In his article, “Aladdin’s Magic Lantern,” Efros wrote that “the face of modernism is turned outwards, while folk art turns inward.” Efros’…
Teenagers today, like many adults, seem to have become obsessed with Israel and Israeli politics. Last May, when a ceasefire was called after 11 days of fighting in Israel, my fellow students at Columbia Secondary School in Manhattan, who had never posted anything about Israel on Instagram, were suddenly spokespeople for the “anti-Israel movement.” As…
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