A personal appeal made by Poland’s outgoing chief rabbi to Pope John Paul II to remove the one remaining cross standing near the site of the former Auschwitz death camp has embarrassed and angered Poland’s Jewish leaders. Rabbi Menachem Joskowicz reignited the debate over religious symbols at the former Nazi death camp. But last Friday’s… More ▸
A Philadelphia-area scholar of Yiddish literature was recently awarded a 1999 Guggenheim fellowship. Kathryn Hellerstein, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, received the prestigious award to support her research into female poets who wrote in Yiddish. More ▸
Steven Spielberg donated $500,000 to the National Yiddish Book Center to create a digital Yiddish library. Using the latest technology, the western Massachusetts-based center will reprint works on demand, issue them as CD-ROMs and make them accessible on the Internet. The first volumes of the project are scheduled to be available next year. More ▸
The sole remaining Yiddish theater company in the United States found a temporary home. The New York-based Folksbiene Theater, which is now in its 83rd year, had lost its theater space when the Central Synagogue burned down in August. More ▸
The oldest continuously running Yiddish theater in New York lost its theater space as a result of the fire last month at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue. The loss of its space in the synagogue is threatening the 83rd season of the Folksbiene Theater, which was scheduled to begin at the end of October. More ▸
The Jewish Theatre of the South’s upcoming production features a Jewish brothel owner, a loving lesbian relationship and domestic violence. Since when is this Jewish theater? Since 1907, when European audiences attended the first performances of Sholem Asch’s Yiddish drama “God of Vengeance.” The play proved so potent when it was translated into English and… More ▸
Rabbi Sender Deutsch, a leader of the Satmar Chasidic community and longtime editor and publisher of the widely-read Yiddish newspaper Der Yid, died Sept. 2 at the age of 76. The noted orator and historian — who was also a vice president of the Satmar school system — was buried in the upstate New York… More ▸
There is no Jewish community any more in Reggio Emilia, a town in northern Italy famous for its Parmesan cheese. During the High Holidays this year Reggio Emilia is co-host, along with neighboring Parma, of a three week arts festival aimed at providing Italians with complex insights into the deep and continuing influence Jews have… More ▸
It’s an absurdity that Franz Kafka himself would appreciate. Some 1,500 people recently crowded into New York’s Town Hall for an evening devoted to a new translation of an unfinished novel that its author, now dead, had asked not be published. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Remnick put it as he opened the event, which… More ▸
The sweet sound of first-grade girls singing in Yiddish fades out as more than 50 small faces turn toward the door. They rise to greet Rabbi Hertz Frankel, their dean, who is accompanied by a rare visitor from outside the community. Frankel motions them to sit down and continue singing. But their teacher whispers that… More ▸
