Blog

Idishe bilder writer Moyshele Vulfart describes the visit of two Arab men from Palestine to a kibbutz hakhshara, a preparation kibbutz, in Liepaja, Latvia, in 1938. While it was not uncommon for such reports to be conveyed by Jewish comrades on return visits from Palestine, in this instance the message-bearers were Palestinian men presumably on the other side of the conflict.

Nov 22, 2021

Check out the panels and presentations involving Yiddish at this year’s Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference.

Nov 16, 2021

With an electric guitar, distortion, and hundred-year-old Yiddish lyrics, forshpil’s new album feeds the imagination with liberatory world-building.

Nov 14, 2021

The multilingual and international scope of this list of documentaries produced since 2015 is a testament to the contemporary vibrancy of Yiddish culture across the globe.

Nov 08, 2021

Yiddish literature abounds with #MeToo moments — representations of sexual exploitation and misconduct.

Nov 02, 2021

During the dog days of summer, lines of Vogel’s poetry hummed in my head, and I felt compelled to write back. When I started writing the poems below, Vogel became real to me as a character. The poems are written to her. They address her and beg a response.

Oct 26, 2021

This spring, Debora Vogel’s poetry bloomed riotously across the faces of three buildings in Berlin. Passages from the collection Day Figures (Tog-Figurn, 1930) appeared in Vogel’s Yiddish and in translations into German, Arabic, and English, the letters of those four alphabets painted alongside hobo hieroglyphs, squatter runes, and paleotype. This series of calligraphic murals is the work of Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson (b. 1984).

Oct 26, 2021

The hosts of two beloved Yiddish podcasts chat about how they came to create their programs, with a bilingual transcript.

Oct 13, 2021

Alicia Svigals explores queer yiddishkayt past, present, and future.

Oct 11, 2021

Jonathan Branfman and Lili Rosen discuss navigating queer Yiddish vocabulary with Talmudic associations; how to make a Hasidic children’s book accessible for many other Yiddish readers as well; and other considerations in Rosen’s translation of Branfman’s LGBTQ youth guide.

Oct 05, 2021