Updated 4:30 p.m. Read this article in Yiddish here. The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the world’s preeminent center for the study of the Yiddish language, culture and history, has laid off all of its librarians. Four people were let go in the move, which was announced internally last week and confirmed by executive director…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Yiddish has had a hard time getting on television. In Israel, the language was only permitted on the radio but banned from TV except for a few one-time comedy specials. The only regularly scheduled Yiddish TV shows in history briefly appeared in Montreal in the 1970s and…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To mark Chaya Palevsky’s recent inclusion in the Forward 50 the Forverts is reposting a classic episode of the cooking show “Timeless Delicacies”, in which she describes her mother’s honey balls and ginger candy. Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz demonstrate how to make these classic Jewish desserts.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Many Yiddish books are published these days with rabbinical endorsements but only once in a blue moon is a new Yiddish book released sporting a “mature content” warning on its cover. Just such a book was recently published, Troim Katz Handler’s collected erotic Yiddish poetry “Simkhe 2”…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Here in New York, we‘ve seen a steady stream of coverage about the Siyum Hashas celebration held at Metlife stadium this past week — marking the completion of the seven-year cycle of daf yomi, daily Talmud study. In Jerusalem, the event was marked with a special celebration…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. from LOGTV FILMS on Vimeo. A new documentary film, “Still Life in Lodz,” by Polish-Jewish film director Slawomir Grunberg, portrays four generations of Jewish life in Lodz through the perspective of a still-life painting that belonged to a Jewish family and hung in their apartment from the…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. This week, mazel tovs are echoing in Yiddish social media over the news that klezmer musician Daniel Kahn, star of the hit video of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in Yiddish, and his wife, Yeva Lapsker, a translator and dancer, had their first child in Berlin. The boy was…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The morning after the Jersey City grocery store shooting last week, I waited impatiently to hear details about the victims and how the Hasidic community was coping with the tragedy. According to news sources, the fifty boys in the school right next door to the store laid…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. These days I’ve been thinking of you very much, Bubbe. You left us almost 73 years ago and I still miss you, as well as my youth, when you were my guide, teacher and closest friend. You were the one who taught me what it means to…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Like playing dreidel, the tradition of giving children money (Yiddish: gelt) on Hanukkah is not as old as you think. As Miriam Borden, a Yiddish instructor at Toronto University, wrote last year in the Forward, the tradition is at most several hundred years old. In fact, like…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Latkes were not originally made with potatoes. In fact potatoes didn’t become widely available in Eastern Europe until the 19th century, while latkes harken back to the cuisine of ancient Israel. In Eastern Europe, these pancakes were originally made of quark cheese and buckwheat. A Sephardic equivalent,…
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