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Read this article in Yiddish James Joyce has “Bloomsday”. Robert Burns has “Burns Night”. Now Sholem Asch has his own literary celebration as well, “Asch Wednesday.” The program, held this year for the third time to coincide with Ash Wednesday, is the brainchild of Yiddish Book Center bibliographer and Asch’s great-grandson, David Mazower. The first…
Read this article in Yiddish The video series “Yiddish Word of the Day,” featuring Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter teaching Yiddish words and expressions related to a theme, has been a big hit. Launched in April, the 115 installments in the series have been played more than 600,000 times on Facebook and Youtube. But with 115…
Read this article in Yiddish A recent article on the website, Seforim Blog, compares the phonetics of biblical Hebrew and Arabic. In the post, the author, Rabbi Avi Grossman, remarks that he “cannot fathom” why the letter ayin (ע) in Yiddish became a vowel roughly equivalent to the Latin letter E and asks his readers…
Read this article in Yiddish To mark the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20, the Folksbiene released a video on Tuesday featuring the cast of the company’s hit production of “Fiddler on the Roof” performing “God Bless America” in Yiddish. In the video, created by actor Ben Liebert (who played Motl the Tailor),…
Before 'Hester Street,' Jewish American women characters who looked and acted 'too Jewish' were often ridiculed
Read this article in Yiddish. The week before Hanukkah the Forverts shared a video of how I make potato latkes with my grandson, Leyzer. A number of commenters on Facebook wrote how nice it was that I was speaking Yiddish with my grandchild, and how they wish they could do that, too. Over the years…
Read this article in Yiddish For the ninth consecutive year the YIVO Institute will hold a series of intensive winter courses with Bard College. Unlike the annual YIVO summer program, which focuses nearly exclusively on Yiddish language and culture, the “Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization” includes a wider range of topics. This year, the program…
Read this article in Yiddish One hundred years since first spooking audiences in Eastern Europe, S. An-Sky’s “The Dybbuk” has possessed Zoom and YouTube. In 1920 the Vilna Troupe debuted its legendary production of the most well-known Yiddish play ever staged. Shane Baker, director of the Congress for Jewish Culture had long planned to mark…
Read this article in Yiddish. Yakob Basner may be 93 years-old, but that doesn’t stop him from doing a job he loves: teaching Yiddish. Since immigrating to Southern California from the former Soviet Union in 1980, Basner has taught the mame-loshn to over 2,000 people. “If you want to understand the history of the Jewish…
Click to hear this article read aloud. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us many challenges. But ironically, it’s also helped make 2020 a great year for learning Yiddish. The annual YIVO Yiddish summer program had so many registrants this summer — 60% more than last year — that administrators had to scramble to schedule more…
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