Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of the Yiddish language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews in Europe and still spoken by many Hasidic Jews today.
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Yiddish
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News Fira Bramson, Rescuer of Lithuanian Jewry’s Literary Heritage, Dies at 91
Fira Bramson, a Vilna librarian who was crucial to the post-Communist rescue of Lithuanian Jewry’s literary legacy, passed away at the age of 91 on June 12. Over the past 30 years, anyone researching the past or present of Jewish life and culture in Lithuania, eventually came to Bramson, one of the only archivists and…
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Culture A Concert of Talented Men
Last year Yiddish Soul was the highlight of the Folksbiene’s Kulturfest, a festival that featured hundreds of performances over eight packed days and attracted tens of thousands of attendees. At the time, I wrote in the Yiddish Forward that this high-profile concert of Hasidic and cantorial music, presented as part of SummerStage in Central Park,…
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News It’s Hitler in Yiddish as Mel Brooks Gem ‘The Producers’ Returns to Stage
True story. About a decade ago, a Jewish businessman — Siberian born, but Brooklyn raised — ran into Mel Brooks at the Joe Allen restaurant in Manhattan’s Theater District. “Vos macht a yid?” the man asked Brooks in Yiddish. “How’s it going?” Taking on a Yiddish intonation, Brooks replied. “Shhh …” he said. “I’m not…
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Culture What Yoda’s Yiddish Accent Has To Do With the ‘Are Jews a Race?’ Debate
(JTA) — Science has finally provided evidence of what Jewish “Star Wars” fans long suspected: Yoda is a member of the tribe — or at least he speaks like one. The bad news is the science has been widely dismissed as junk. The Yoda reference appears in a video in which a a 36-year-old Israeli…
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The Schmooze For President Obama, a Brand New Yarmulke From Lipa Schmeltzer
Hasidic pop star Lipa Schmeltzer recently delivered a pair of newly-designed silver yarmulkes for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle. The gift was the culmination of a promise he had made to the First Couple last Hanukkah, after the annual candlelighting ceremony at the White House, where the singer had been invited to perform….
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Opinion Why Jews Need To Recognize the Armenian Genocide Once and for All
Imagine that you’re walking in Manhattan a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day and see five airplanes skywriting in massive letters that the Holocaust was a hoax. How would you feel? Imagine that you later find out that a full-page advertisement had run the same day in the Washington Post explaining that although some Jews…
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Culture Mystery Pre-Holocaust Photo Trove Depicts Family of Yiddish Scholar Ruth Wisse
(JTA) — When documentary photographer Richard Schofield stumbled upon a trove of unidentified prewar photographs in September 2013 in the storage room of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, Lithuania, he knew he had found something special. The photos, dating from about 1910 through 1940, were from a Lithuanian Jewish family’s album that had been…
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The Schmooze Two Yiddish Plays Get Drama Desk Nods
Two Yiddish-language theatrical productions, “Toyt fun a Salesman” and “The Golden Bride,” have been nominated in several categories for the Drama Desk awards. “Toyt fun a Salesman,” a translation of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” produced by the New Yiddish Rep, was nominated for Outstanding Revival of a Play, and its lead actor, Avi…
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