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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The Schmooze Enough With The ‘Ashkenormativity,’ Buzzfeed
Another day, another Buzzfeed Jewish-centric video. And much like their other chosen productions, it’s incredibly Ashkenormative. “11 Things Jewish Friends Just Get” tells the tale of two nominally Jewish ladies, who have to stick together in the face of incredibe goyish ignorance. Thank God someone in this room understands what “schlepping” means, amirite? Aside from…
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The Schmooze New Festival Celebrates Hebrew Language and Culture
Photo: Larson Harley A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. As the musicians began playing the first strains of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s symphony, “Peter and the Wolf,” on the stage of the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan on March 15, the hundreds of children in the large, awe-inspiring sanctuary stopped their…
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The Schmooze ‘When Blood Ran Red’ Drama Wins Playwriting Prize
Ben Gonshor The first-ever David and Clare Rosen Memorial Play Contest, an international playwriting competition for projects with Jewish and Yiddish themes, has chosen its winner, Montreal-based Ben Gonshor. His historical drama “When Blood Ran Red” chronicles the friendships between African-American actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson and leading Soviet Jews after World War…
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Culture Joshua Fishman, Yiddishist and Linguistics Pioneer, Dies at 88
A version of this piece appeared in Yiddish here. Sociolinguist, Yiddish scholar and advocate for endangered languages Joshua (Shikl) Fishman died March 1 in New York. He leaves behind his wife of more than 60 years Gella Schweid-Fishman, three sons, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He is predeceased by his sister, the Yiddish poet Rukhl…
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The Schmooze My Memories of Leonard Nimoy, Yiddish-Speaking Vulcan
I first met Leonard Nimoy — a.k.a. Spock from the hit TV series “Star Trek,” who died today at 83 on February 27, 2015 — when as a celebrity at the 1973 American Booksellers Convention in Anaheim, California. He stopped by my publishing company’s exhibit booth. A distant Litvak cousin of my mother’s from Grodno…
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Culture All The Yiddish That’s Fit To Print in Easthampton, Massachusetts
Who knew that we loved to listen to the air? Until the death of analogue music we never realized we craved the warmth of vinyl’s atmospheric cracklings, but in 2014 record sales spiked 49%. And so it is with printing. Once we no longer rely for our news on swathes of newsprint hurtling through factories…
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Culture How Family Holocaust Stories Became Multimedia Art Exhibit
A version of this article appeared in Yiddish here. Children of Holocaust survivors can be split into two groups: those whose parents or grandparents said nothing about those harrowing years, and those whose relatives gave them detailed accounts of their experiences. I belong to the first category. Although my father’s family had, like all the…
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Culture Philip Levine Was Working-Class Poet Inspired by Yiddishkeit
Philip Levine, the Jewish poet who died on February 14 at age 87, was a feisty writer inspired by working class roots and a family tradition of bubbe-meises (grandmother’s fables). In “Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections” (2000) Levine analysed his poem “The Old Testament”: “My twin brother swears that at age thirteen I’d…
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