NEW YORK — Yiddish was the language spoken by Tevye the milk peddler and the other shtetl characters depicted in the stories that inspired “Fiddler on the Roof,” yet in this country the landmark ...

The preservation of Yiddish as a spoken language gets more attention, but Yiddish once had a vibrant written tradition as well. Plays, poetry, novels, political tracts — all were published in Yiddish ...

Yiddish is a familiar presence in contemporary English speech. Many people use or at least know the meaning of words like chutzpah (audacity), schlep (drag) or nosh (snack). These words have been ...

Spoken by over 11 million Jews in Eastern and Central Europe before WWII, Yiddish is still today spoken by an estimated 600,000 people. It is also widely used in in traditional Jewish religious ...

In a unique course this spring, Yiddish scholar Leyzer Burko will explore the rich dialect of Ukrainian-Yiddish, once widely spoken not just in Ukraine, but in Romania, Moldova and Poland.

On my mother’s side, they all spoke fluent Yiddish. Most of these conversations took place while eating moisture-free yellow pound cake and washing it down with warmed-up day-old Maxwell House Coffee.

For Rakhmiel Peltz, a professor emeritus of sociolinguistics and founding director of Judaic studies at Drexel University, a realization led him to conclude that the switch he made within the world of ...

In April 2022, right after the COVID virus sequestered us all in our homes, the Forward staff huddled about what we could do ...

At a Berlin bar on a recent Wednesday evening, several patrons kept glancing curiously at the group of eight people around a neighboring table. The members of the group were chatting in a language ...

On Nov. 2, the 13th edition of the “What’s not to Like?” concert took place at Beth El Synagogue, just a short walk from East Campus. The event, centered around the theme of “Resistance and Freedom,” ...

Let me begin by saying I don’t speak Yiddish or understand more than a few words. My parents did their best to prevent me from learning it – they wanted me to be 100% American. But they spoke it when ...