The Newspaper That Speaks Your LanguageIn 1970, soon after my bar mitzvah, at the instigation of my uncle — late Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter — I joined in a demonstration with family and friends in front of the old Forward offices on East Broadway, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, demanding that the paper clean up its language. No, it was not a question of vulgarity in the language that offended us, but such issues as the use of an English word or two in every Yiddish sentence, what some called “potato Yiddish,” and the old-fashioned spelling in the paper that was heavily influenced by German and English. The Forward had lost touch with Yiddish orthographic changes over the previous 50 years and was a living dinosaur in that respect.…Read more
Journal Editor, 102, Devoted to YiddishEveryone active in the world of Yiddish culture has to have shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of history, but Itche Goldberg, who died December 27 at age 102, had the broadest shoulders of all.…Read more
Folksbiene Spins Revolving Doors of ComedyFor its 89th season, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater is presenting Leon Kobrin’s comedy on immigrant life — “The Lady Next Door” (in Yinglish, “Di Next-door-ike”). The Folksbiene is the only professional Yiddish theater in America, and its performances and future plans are particularly significant to the Yiddish cultural world. This…Read more
The Last Professional Yiddish Theater Looks AheadLeon Kobrin’s classic Yiddish play “The Girl Next Door” (“Di Nekstdorike”) revolves around the question: Who would make a better wife — an observant and modest, pretty shtetl girl or a sleazy, shameful adulteress who pretends to be an American “lady”? It seems that for poor Velvele, the choice is not so cut and dried.A staged…Read more
Journal Editor, 102, Devoted to YiddishEveryone active in the world of Yiddish culture has to have shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of history, but Itche Goldberg, who died December 27 at age 102, had the broadest shoulders of all.…Read more
Folksbiene Spins Revolving Doors of ComedyFor its 89th season, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater is presenting Leon Kobrin’s comedy on immigrant life — “The Lady Next Door” (in Yinglish, “Di Next-door-ike”). The Folksbiene is the only professional Yiddish theater in America, and its performances and future plans are particularly significant to the Yiddish cultural world. This…Read more
The Last Professional Yiddish Theater Looks AheadLeon Kobrin’s classic Yiddish play “The Girl Next Door” (“Di Nekstdorike”) revolves around the question: Who would make a better wife — an observant and modest, pretty shtetl girl or a sleazy, shameful adulteress who pretends to be an American “lady”? It seems that for poor Velvele, the choice is not so cut and dried.A staged…Read more
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