VIDEO: An Israeli reserve soldier on the front sends a pre-sabbath greeting in Yiddish

The soldier, named Yonatan, displays a kugel he received and wishes everyone “a peaceful shabbos”

Courtesy of Daniel Galay

By Forverts Staff October 13, 2023

On Friday morning, the Forward got hold of a pre-shabbos greeting in fluent Yiddish from an Israeli reserve soldier.

Two days earlier, the soldier, named Yonatan, had sent a video of himself singing The Partisan Hymn in Yiddish, while riding in a tank on a dusty road on Israel’s northern front. In this second video, received on Friday morning, Yonatan displays a kugel that he received for shabbos and then recites a well-known Yiddish proverb about kugel. Finally, he wishes everyone “a gutn shabes mit a sakh ruikeyt un nakhes” — a good shabbos with peace of mind and joy.

Rukhl Schaechter and Zach Golden are the staff of the Forverts, the Yiddish Forward.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish Editor