Read this article in Yiddish Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism Marc Caplan Indiana University Press, $40, 394 PP The brief but lively and productive Berlin period in the history of modern Yiddish culture is a special source of interest for contemporary researchers. Out of a melting pot of various languages, styles and…
Read this article in Yiddish. Most media organizations would jump on the opportunity to expose a massive wedding held in violation of public health measures during the pandemic. New York Hasidic newspaper Der Blatt did the opposite: it hid the news so as not to tip off secular authorities. The wedding of Yoel Teitelbaum, grandson…
Read this article in Yiddish. Sure, you might have known that Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s selection for U.S. Secretary of State, has a band — but did you know that his great-grandfather, Meir Blinken, was a Yiddish writer? The Ukraine-born elder Blinken, whose Yiddish nom de plume was B. Mayer and who was buried…
Read this article in Yiddish. Women, Men and Books: Issues of Gender in Yiddish Discourse Gennady Estraikh, Mikhail Krutikov (Editors) Legenda, $99, 206 PP “Historically, the gender division in Yiddish was arguably the strongest among European languages.” So begins co-editor Mikhail Krutikov’s introduction to the new book, Women, Men and Books – “Issues of Gender…
Read this article in Yiddish. Although there have been a number of new Yiddish songs recorded in the past couple of years, it‘s rare to see songs written by women who have left the Hasidic community. Hannah Gee was raised Hasidic but decided early on that this wasn’t the life for her. Yet, in contrast…
When I first heard that Warsaw’s Polin Museum had an exhibit about Muranow, the former Jewish quarter of the Polish capital, my first instinct was to buy a ticket to Warsaw – until I remembered that we’re in the midst of an epidemic. Although I live in Israel, Muranow has become very familiar to me…
Read this article in Yiddish The Yiddish Book Center recently launched a unique podcast in which the actress, translator and Yiddish theater scholar Caraid O’Brien reads her own translation of the memoirs of a Russian revolutionary. The program, “The Last Maximalist,” recalls the extraordinary early years of Klara Klebanova, a Jewish girl who left her…
Read this article in Yiddish What were the most important Jewish texts of the last 40 years? What did the Jewish opinion-makers have to say about the most important issues of Jewish survival? Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire Sufrin attempt to answer these questions in a collection of 70 selected documents called “The New Jewish Canon:…
Read this article in Yiddish David Shneer, a widely admired history professor and director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, died November 4 in Denver of brain cancer. He was 48. Shneer was one of the liveliest people I’ve ever known, and his premature passing means that this bright…
Read this article in Yiddish. Right from the beginning, “The Binding of Itzik”, a new short film playing in the online Yonkers Film Festival and winner of Best Narrative Short Film at the Berlin Underground Film Festival, treads into uncharted territory. As innocuous piano music plays in the background, the film opens with a computer…
Read this article in Yiddish On October 19th more than 1,000 people tuned in to watch the Forward’s first online gala. One of this year’s features was an online auction. One of the offerings people could bid on – a private Yiddish lesson with Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter – went up to $720. The evening…
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