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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The Schmooze Masha Leon Remembers Chana Mlotek
When I recently called Chana Mlotek about an obscure song of a girl weaving sandals, within a nanosecond, she gave me the song’s provenance, lyricist and composer. On November 4 she died at 91. Chana was among the few of a generation to call me by the diminutive Mashele — we shared a more than…
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The Schmooze Rapping About ‘My Yiddishe Mame’
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here A recently released music video weaves together the classic Yiddish hit “Mein Yiddishe Mame” (“My Jewish Mother”) with a modern hip-hop tribute to a more contemporary Jewish mother. In its first two weeks on You Tube, the video received a whopping 11,000 hits. “Mein Yiddishe Mama,”…
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Life Recalling Chana Mlotek, Mother of Yiddish Music
Before there were blogs and Wikipedia, there were archivists like Chana Mlotek, an expert in Yiddish ethnomusicology, whose memory was a trove of cultivated knowledge spanning fields of literature and history. Mlotek is pictured here (back row, third from right) in the 1960s in the Bronx, with a Yiddish-speaking mother’s group that was affiliated with…
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The Schmooze Chana Mlotek, Yiddish Folksong Scholar, Dies at 91
Yiddish folksong expert, researcher and anthologist Chana Mlotek died on November 4 at age 91. Mlotek maintained a decades-long association with the Forverts and with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where she was the institute’s music archivist. When I worked with Mlotek at YIVO, people would come to the archives and say, “I only…
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News How Deb Tambor’s Life Ended — and Started Firestorm in Hasidic New Square
This story was translated from Yiddish by Frimet Goldberger. A version first appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Motie (Abe) Weiss and Deborah (Deb) Tambor, a young couple in love living in Bridgeton, N.J,, had a beautiful tradition: Each morning at 9 a.m., Tambor would make a cup of coffee and bring it to his workplace,…
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Culture Brooklyn Macaroni Maker Shoots Jewish Tailor in Hypnotism Spat
1913 •100 years ago Macaroni Maker Shoots Jewish Tailor Benjamin Zeidler, a tailor from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, heard five gunshots ring out in quick succession as he was sitting at his sewing machine. Zeidler stood up to see what the commotion was about when he realized that he had been shot in his…
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Film & TV How To Make a New Yiddish Film
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. The first words in the trailer for the new Yiddish-language film “The Pin” are “Ikh ken nit khapn dem otem” — “I can’t catch my breath.” The movie, currently playing in New York, takes place primarily in a barn in an unknown location during the Second…
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News Jewish Pimp From Brownsville Faces Long Arm of Justice
1913 •100 years ago Verdict Awaited in Pimping Trial After days of deliberation, the jury in the trial of Avrom Belkin was still unable to come to a decision. On trial for forcing a young woman into prostitution, Minsk-born Belkin claimed he was innocent. Annie Jacobs, the girl in question, testified against him and described…
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