Religion News Service on MSN

Yiddish offers a moral vocabulary for our times

(RNS) — Forget about shpilkes and shlepping. Yiddish contains moral weight. (RNS) — A few days ago, I found myself watching ...

The Dueling Scholars Who Bickered a Yiddish Dictionary Into Existence

The Jewish tradition of debate is at the center of a new chamber opera about two scholars clashing over a Yiddish dictionary in the aftermath of World War II.
Jewish JournalOpinion

The Oys of Yiddish

One reason my wife and I never learned Yiddish was that our families didn’t want us to. Yiddish was only spoken when they ...
Jewish Exponent

At YIVO, an Unfinished Yiddish Dictionary Gets the Last Word — as Opera

Explore the fascinating story behind The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, a new chamber opera celebrating YIVO’s ...
The Forward on MSN

An unprecedented, and unfinished work, of Yiddish scholarship is now an opera

When Ben Kaplan and Alex Weiser started working at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, they heard one of its essential legends in the form of a joke. The 100-year-old library and archive, whose ...
Religion News Service

Jewish musicians mourn Gaza's suffering in Yiddish, a language nearly lost to genocide

(NPR and RNS) — A recently released album, ‘Lider Mit Palestine,’ features several artists and 17 original compositions — some modern, some mournful and all shaped by Yiddish and its history. (NPR and ...
The Times of Israel

Chava Alberstein talks about love of Yiddish, autobiography at fest

The beloved singer-songwriter shares stories from her autobiography, 'Canaan Alley,' at poetry festival relocated from Metula to Jerusalem ...
The Times of Israel

At NY’s YIVO, a legendary unfinished Yiddish dictionary gets the last word — as opera

Premiering this week, 'The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language' tells the true story of Holocaust survivors and émigré scholars in NYC racing to salvage a civilization ...