To the Editor: It was quite astonishing to read Jacob Weitzner’s criticism of the work of Israeli Ambassador to Poland Anna Azari in “The Israeli Embassy in Poland Can do More to Win Friends for Israel” (July 26, 2017). His judgement of her performance is neither fair nor complete. Ambassador Azari not only participates in…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I stood, legs apart and face to the wall, in the Capitol Police Vehicle Maintenance Division. In other words, a garage. And I thought: I want to shake the hand of the person who invented plastic zip ties. They’re probably doing extremely well for themselves. But let’s…
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. “I’m available,” Leah said brightly. “Good,” he said, feeling an instant resistance to her enthusiasm. “I’ll see you at eight o’clock?” This time Yankel was able to borrow a different car. It was an almost-new Oldsmobile 98 Regency. “Beautiful car,” Leah said when he…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. People living outside of Poland often don’t understand how crucial the Israeli ambassadorship is to the Polish people. In fact, Poland has a very special relationship with Israel. Most Poles will tell you that both nations have a common historical legacy. This is precisely why the embassy…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The extreme poverty that Jews once experienced in the cities and towns of Eastern Europe has been well documented, but what exactly was their diet like? According to the memoirs of Hirsh Abramovich, a Yiddish writer in pre-war Vilna, the Jews in Lithuania were probably the poorest…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever was born on July 15th, 1913 in Smorgon, a city in what is now Belarus. Known today primarily for being one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and for his wartime service as a Jewish Partisan in the forests…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A strand of DNA is a lot like computer software; it’s the blueprint for the complex computations that cells perform, and like a coding error in a computer program, a single mutation—either a deletion, insertion, or duplication—to the strand can cause cells to malfunction. But DNA doesn’t…
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. As soon as they settled at their table, Leah looked at him and asked: “What’s your father’s relationship with God?” She sat facing him in some colorful thing, something fuzzy it seemed. His eyes roamed the room and then settled back on his tea…
I am SO making this delicious-looking chicken and rice pilaf next Friday. I just watched this video — in Yiddish (with English subtitles) — from our Yiddish Forverts editor-in-chief Rukhl Schaechter and culinary historian Eve Jochnowitz. On the outside, the chicken looks like your basic, but Schaechter stuffs it with half an orange and two…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Der Nister, a master of fantasy tales who later turned to Soviet-style realism in his writing, was a complicated man and rarely opened himself up to strangers. There were books of memoirs written about him but they deal, for the most part, with his earlier years. The…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. About two years ago Gella Fishman, the Yiddish teacher and archivist who passed away last month, called me one evening and asked indignantly: “How could it be that YIVO is now sending all its letters out without a single word in Yiddish?” Although I had been receiving…
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