Jordan Kutzik is the deputy editor of the Yiddish Forward. Contact him at kutzik@forward.com.
Jordan Kutzik
By Jordan Kutzik
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Yiddish World WATCH: Have You Ever Heard This Yiddish Song About Swallowing Goldfish?
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…
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Theater ‘Tevye Served Raw’ Captures Sholem Aleichem’s Genius In Two Languages
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Sholem Aleichem has been an unusually frequent topic of conversation in New York this summer, thanks to the critical and commercial success of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Yiddish-language production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” As anyone who has read Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories is well aware,…
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Culture Listen To The Entire Yiddish Repertoire — At Once!
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Most American Jews recognize at most two or three Yiddish songs: “Afn Pripetshik,” “Tumbalalaika” and perhaps “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn.” American Jews who grew up speaking Yiddish, however, can recognize dozens of others such as “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen,” “Afn Veg Shteyt A Boym” and so forth. Fans…
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Culture WATCH: How The Jews Of The Vilna Ghetto Saved Precious Books From Nazis
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A group of several dozen Jewish intellectuals known as the Paper Brigade risked their lives to save thousands of books and documents from destruction during the Holocaust by hiding them in the Vilna ghetto. The Yiddish Forward spoke with Dr. David Fishman, author of the recent book…
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Yiddish World How Irish-American Actor James Cagney Learned Yiddish — And Shocked Every Executive In Hollywood
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Continuing my irregular series on non-Jewish American celebrities who spoke Yiddish I would be loath not to mention one of Hollywood’s most charismatic film stars of all time, James Cagney. Cagney, best known for his portrayals of tough guys in gangster films, crime dramas and war epics,…
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Yiddish World Yiddish Parody Of Israeli Eurovision Song Goes Viral
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Israel, together with the entire European continent, loses its collective mind every May when Eurovision rolls around. The internationally televised singing contest, which passes by nearly unnoticed in the U.S., is a big deal in the Jewish state. Every performance in the run-up to the garish spectacle…
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Yiddish World How Jews In The 1940s Honored The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — And How We Honor It Now
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The first Holocaust memorial services took place while the genocide of Europe’s Jews was still occurring. Whenever a city or town was liberated, a few Jews would return, clean up the mass graves where their relatives had been shot, erect a simple marker and chant “El Malei…
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Culture WATCH: On Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s 75th Anniversary, Remember Heroes With ‘Hymn Of The Partisans’
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thursday April 19 marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In remembrance of the occasion, last week I posted a collection of various renditions of Hirsh Glik’s partisan’s song, the “Hymn of the Partisans,” on the Yiddish Forward’s video blog Oyneg Shabes….
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