This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A Yiddish-language album “Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WWII” was nominated for a Grammy for Best World Music Album. The unusual honor is only the second time that an album of Yiddish songs has been nominated for music’s most esteemed prize. The first was the soundtrack…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. 116 years after his birth, Isaac Bashevis Singer has found a new champion: Paul McCartney. Yes, really. When the Polish Parliament passed a resolution honoring the Nobel Prize-winning author on November 21, the anniversary of his birth, it was thanks to the efforts of the former Beatle….
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. It all started with a joke. Simon Starr, an Australian music producer, band director and bass guitarist, had been living in Israel for six years when he and his family had to return to Melbourne to be closer to aging relatives. Professionally speaking, the timing was not…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the 1930s, Golda Meir, then known as Golda Meyerson, worked on a mission for Pioneer Women in Israel in the United States, collecting funds for women and children in Palestine. In 1931, the organization held its annual fundraising dinner in Buffalo, New York and Meir came…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The Yiddish Forward is producing a series of classic Yiddish jokes presented in Yiddish by Leana Jelen, a young Yiddish-speaking sign-language interpreter. In this joke famed Jewish folk-hero and alleged atheist Hershele Ostropoler gives a unique answer to a friend questioning his piety.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The Yiddish Forward is producing a series of classic Yiddish jokes presented in Yiddish by Leana Jelen, a young Yiddish-speaking sign-language interpreter. This joke shows the drastic measures some Jewish grandmothers will take to protect their granddaughters — or at least their own sanity.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A good friend of mine insists on drawing a straight line between Robert Bowers, the alleged killer of eleven Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, and President Donald Trump’s “hateful” rhetoric on the campaign trail. My friend didn’t buy my argument that Barack Obama was president…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. It can be tough to find a Yiddish class irl (in real life) if you aren’t a college student or a New York resident. But now it’s easier for Chicago folks to learn Yiddish: the Chicago YIVO has announced a new series of courses to be launched…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Aaron Bendich, a young reader of the Yiddish Forverts, spends a lot of time hanging out with his 103-year-old grandfather Max. Max Bendich, a child of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and a WWII-veteran, remembers a plethora of rare Yiddish songs, including novelty songs that were popular on…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Although Greece has a venerable 2,400-year Jewish history, it’s certainly not the first place that comes to mind when you think of Yiddish. Although Yiddish was spoken a bit in Thessalonica before World War II, the Ashkenazi community there had, as in Cairo, a small and short-lived…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Watch Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz prepare this holiday treat in a video in Yiddish with English subtitles.
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