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Read this article in Yiddish Since its founding in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) the YIVO Institute has collected personal histories from Jews so that future historians would be able to explore how world events impacted Jewish life. Through revolutions, wars, genocides, famine and yes, epidemics, YIVO has always aimed to ensure that…
Read this article in Yiddish The first chapter of Harry Potter in Yiddish can now be heard online, read by translator Arun Viswanath. Although Viswanath reads the narration in his native Ukrainian Yiddish, he acts out certain characters’ dialogue in their respective dialects. Hagrid’s thick West Country accent of the original is transformed in the…
Read this article in Yiddish. Like many people whose lives are tightly intertwined with other family members, the COVID-19 social distancing restrictions have left me feeling like the rug was pulled out from under me – especially since my husband, Leon, and I had been living what many grandparents only dream about: three generations under…
Read this article in Yiddish. The longtime teacher, camp director, Yiddish radio host and cultural activist Mikhl Baran died on Friday, April 17th, at his home in Queens. He was 97 years old. Baran was born in Oszmiana (Oshmene, in Yiddish), Poland in 1922. In a 2018 profile he recalled the tensions in the town…
Read this article in Yiddish. The non-profit organization that provides free, traditional burials for the Jewish poor has had to buy a massive trailer to manage the high volume of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic. It holds more than a dozen bodies, and the organization doesn’t have enough people or time to bury them…
Read this article in Yiddish. An international cadre of musicians, singers and dancers took part in a Third Seder conducted over Zoom. More than 1,100 people watched the program, which was organized live over Facebook by Rabbi Avram Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld of Golden Land Concerts and Connections. Hundreds of others have since viewed it…
Stuck at home due to COVID-19, Riki starts preparing mashed potatoes but ends up with something a bit different – and so tasty!
Most Ashkenazi Jews make charoset with apples, nuts and wine but in Turkey, the recipe is quite different. Here Gitl Schaechter Viswanath demonstrates how Sephardic Jews prepare it with dates and oranges.
Read this article in Yiddish Most traditional Jews outside of Israel conduct two seders every Passover. But when I was growing up, I attended three. My children did, too. The third seder, a popular tradition among several American Jewish organizations beginning in the 1920s, has been providing a Yiddish cultural alternative to the biblically based…
Read this article in Yiddish A New York-based burial society has applied for emergency funding as it races to keep up with steep increases in the cost of coronavirus-related personal protective equipment, additional grave openings and new personnel to arrange funerals. The 132-year-old Hebrew Free Burial Association, which arranges burials for indigent Jews, expects to…
Read this article in Yiddish The only bakery in our shtetl stood at the corner of two central streets, just across from our courtyard. In those rare nights when they actually baked bread, its sour aroma would suffuse the surrounding streets – a signal that it was time to get out of bed and rush…
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