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.
For more stories on Yiddishkeit, see Forverts in English, and for stories written in…
Yiddish
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News ‘Yiddishland’ Brings Diverse Group Together for Language and Culture
Mikhl Baran grew up with Yiddish. Now 91, he says of Oshmiany, the town in Lithuania where he was born, “Even the stones spoke Yiddish in our little shtetl.” Anthony Russell discovered the language in his thirties. A gay, African-American singer of opera, he stumbled across Yiddish cantorial singing during a mid-career crisis, and says…
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Culture Yiddish Tomes Go Digital With DIY Scanner
It’s a scenario that the Yiddish writers of yore could never have predicted, and yet by which they likely would have been tickled: Today, their work is being digitized with the help of a home-made scanner built by a former Baptist from Indiana who lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. As of mid…
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Life Pepi Littman, Yiddish Drag King
Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. The image of early 20th century itinerant member of the Broder Singers (and Yiddish drag king) Pepi ‘Peshe Khane’ Littman (1874-1930) seen here as ‘the griner bucher’ (the inexperienced bachelor)…
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The Schmooze Remembering Eli Wallach, Yiddish Theater Champion
Each time I met Eli Wallach — whom I had known for nearly 30 years (and always with his wife Anne Jackson at his side) — he greeted me warmly. Ever gracious, he’s sent handwritten ‘thank you’ notes following mentions in my column and a particularly sweet one after my review of their daughter Roberta’s performance…
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News Heir to The Austrian Throne And His Wife Are Shot
The imperial couple was on a tour of the Bosnian province that Austria had won from Turkey six years earlier. A young Serbian student was the shooter, believing that province must be Serbian. A second youth threw a bomb on the couple hours prior to the shooting. They are proud of their attack. Major Upheaval…
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News This Is Not a War, But a Series of Pogroms
I’ve just returned to Berlin from a journey to Lodz and several other cities in Poland that are currently in German hands. The trip was eventful. I was in the apex of the area where Russian barbarians were raging not long ago and that currently breathes freely under German rule. Earlier I sought out the…
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News Zionism’s Victory and the Socialist Enlightenment of the Masses
If such news — that the land of Israel is going to be given to the Jews, had come 50 years ago, it would have made a totally different impression on the Jewish masses than it is making today. It would then have had a similar impact as the coming of the Messiah as it…
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News Letters from War-Torn Europe
April 7, 1915 From Vilna a letter was posted to Mr. Arbeiter of 932 North 2nd What can I tell you about Vilna, whatever it is will only be one trop in a sea of great troubles and misfortunes that this war has brought upon us. The most awful thing occurred in Vilna—with a young…
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