This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thanks to the hard work of his literary admirers, an English translation of Grigory Kanovich’s autobiographical novel “Shtetl Love Song” has finally appeared. The novel was released by a boutique British publishing house, Noir Press, that specializes in modern Lithuanian literature. It’s remarkable that one of the…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I love attending academic conferences. As I sit there, taking notes, I feel like I’m back in college, eagerly soaking up facts and analyses provided by the invited scholars. It’s also an opportunity to chat with fellow participants who happen to share my interests. Sometimes, though, a…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The daring and often disturbing erotic poetry of Celia Dropkin has become more accessible in recent years, thanks to the appearance, in 2014, of first collection of her works in English translation. That collection, The Acrobat, led to wider interest in Dropkin’s poetry, partially inspiring the creation…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I attended Yeshiva and Mesivtah Chaim Berlin from 1954 to 1966. It almost ruined my life. Not that I’m complaining. Chaim Berlin is one of the oldest yeshivas in Brooklyn, established in 1904. It’s one of the most respected Haredi- Lithuanian yeshivas in the United States and…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As editor of the Forverts, most of the questions I get from readers involve either the price of an obituary or a request to decipher a handwritten postcard written by a deceased relative. Recently, though, I got an email with a very different sort of question: “I’d…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In this video, master storyteller Shira Gorshman describes her impoverished childhood in a Lithuanian shtetl. She vividly describes her brutal stepfather, her very competent but combative grandmother and her adoring grandfather, who was the first person to introduce her to the beauty of the outdoors. Imbued with…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The third child sexual abuse awareness protest in Brooklyn this year got off to a quiet start. That was actually good news for the dozen demonstrators in front of Borough Park’s Novominsk Yeshiva on this warm fall afternoon. At a previous rally, elsewhere in Brooklyn, an ultra-Orthodox…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In today’s trip to the past, we examine an invitation to a party – a Jewish Holiday Party. I found this fascinating poster in the YIVO digital collection of POSTERS FROM DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS, which are on display at the website of the American Center of Jewish…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The American writer Joshua Cohen’s last two books, Book of Numbers and Witz, were considerable epic novels that dealt with philosophical issues through a mix of satirical realism and grotesque fantasy. But his new book, “Moving Kings” (both a name of a company and an allegorical key),…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Dr. Walter Zev Feldman, a leading researcher of Turkish and Jewish music and an exquisite dancer, visited Japan this year with his wife Dr. Judit Frigyesi – a writer, artist and professor of musicology at Bar Ilan University. The couple lectured as part of a symposium at…
Defying the KGB agents milling around, thousands of Jews tried to get into the great hall of the synagogue
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