Category
yiddish
Yiddish: The enduring language
Jonathan Kirsch
March 1, 2013
Among the many ways the Jewish people have sought to honor the Six Million, perhaps none is so life-affirming as the revival of interest in Yiddish, the mother tongue of the vast majority of the men, women and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Hollywood gets lessons in the nuances of Hebrew
Etgar Keret
February 1, 2008
Some time ago, I was invited to a dinner here in Israel attended by a delegation of film people from Los Angeles. During the meal, one successful documentary director asked me a question: Could I think of any Hebrew words that have no equivalent in English?
An excellent question, and even though I was sure there were many such words, the only two I could think of actually do have English equivalents, except that in Hebrew — or maybe it would be more accurate to say \”in Israeli\” — they carry completely different values.
A Bissel ‘Kvetch’ Goes a Long Way
Allan Nadler
September 29, 2005
Wex analyzes the many ways that Yiddish — a language that has perfected the art of the curse while experiencing deep discomfort with praise — developed a strategy to deal with those rare times when a Yiddish Jew (henceforth, the \”Yid\”) has nothing negative, nasty or bitter to say.
Annulla Has Her Say
Keren Engelberg
January 27, 2005
\”Annulla: An Autobiography\” tells the story of Annulla Allen, a woman born in Lvov, Galicia, who survived the Holocaust by passing as Aryan, and eventually immigrated to London.
Little Miss Shmutzy
Gaby Wenig
July 8, 2004
Anne-Marie Baila Asner decided that she was going to reinvigorate Yiddish by writing and illustrating cute, brightly colored children\’s books that would help people develop an affinity for the language.
Lovin’ the
David Finnigan
December 11, 2003
For playwright Miriam Hoffman, Yiddish is hardly a dying language. \”It just doesn\’t want to die,\” said Hoffman, who will teach Yiddish at the Dec. 14-20 intensive language/culture immersion courses at UCLA and the University of Judaism.
\”Yiddish was always a problem since its birth,\” said Hoffman, who writes children\’s books on the subject, lectures at Columbia University and writes for the Yiddish-language newspaper, Forvertz. \”It had to compete with the sacred language, which is Hebrew. Yiddish carried [Zionism] on its back for 1,000 years.\”
My Yiddische Papa
Michael Aushenker
October 24, 2002
\”Yiddish is our language; it\’s our culture,\” said educator Yakob Basner. \”Before the war, 12 million Jews spoke it. And the last words spoken by the Jews in the Holocaust before they were killed was in Yiddish.\”
The Nachas of Books
Amy Sara Clark
June 27, 2002
Until recently, it seemed you could find Yiddish books only in obscure libraries or in the attic of the house of someone\’s grandparents.
Assembly Yiddish
Tom Tugend
June 21, 2001
For the benefit of the 90 percent of Assembly-members who are not Jewish, and for other Yiddish-challenged lawmakers, Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) has published a 36-page booklet, appropriately titled \”Yiddish for Assemblymembers.\”
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