Blog

A conversation about Yiddish, theater, the value we place on the past, and the need to grapple with it.

Jun 05, 2025

This essay about Yiddish-speaking artist Nathan Altman, written in French by Dr. Pascale Samuel, is from the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “The Dybbuk: Phantom of a Lost World,” on view at Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme [Museum of the Art and History of Judaism] (mahJ) in Paris through January 26, 2025.

Dec 05, 2024

Tamara Gleason Friedberg sat down with Sonia Gollance in Summer 2024 to discuss Yiddish theater in London, her translation of Tea Arciszewska’s Miryeml, and what comes next.

Nov 26, 2024

I badly wanted The Last Yiddish Speaker to be an American Jewish meditation on American Jewish safety that used Yiddish to pull our political imaginations toward new horizons.

Oct 23, 2024

In The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language: A Chamber Opera, composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan endow enchantment and glamor on their decidedly unglamorous protagonists and, most importantly, heighten our attention to their doubts and torments the way only an opera can.

Jul 25, 2024

Bashevis Singer’s play takes on new meaning and relevance for Ukrainian audiences.

Apr 08, 2024

Eyshe Beirich reviews Mikhl Yashinsky’s original Yiddish play Di psure loyt khayim.

Feb 26, 2024

Spanish/Lithuanian artists Adrian Schvarzstein and Jūratė Širvytė-Rukštelė delivered an interactive, dynamic, wordless performance, titled אָנקומען /Arrived/Przybyli in the Kraków Street Theatre Festival.

Sep 26, 2023

Detroit’s Yiddish theater, despite its distance from the center of American Yiddish culture in New York, was home to big personalities and bigger stars.

Apr 27, 2023

As the biannual Ashkenaz festival kicked off, so did the North American Premiere of Bas Sheve, a Yiddish opera, on August 31, 2022.

Jan 13, 2023