2/4 | Birthday of Georg Brandes
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 4 Birthday of Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, Danish critic and scholar Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, the Danish-Jewish philosopher and literary critic, was born on February 4th, 1842 in Copenhagen. Brandes gained a reputation as a popular but controversial scholar for a series of lectures he began giving in 1871, later published as Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. Brandes was denied a position as a university professor of aesthetics because of his Jewish family, his outspoken atheism, and his generally radical views on sexuality, art,...
Read More12/17 | Birthday of Władysław Broniewski
Today in Yiddishkayt… December 17 Birthday of Revolutionary Polish Poet Władysław Broniewski Today is the birthday of the Polish radical poet, Władysław Broniewski, born in Płock December 17, 1897 (died February 10, 1962 in Warsaw). As a young man, Broniewski joined the Polish independence movement and fought against Russia in World War I before becoming an activist in the Polish Communist movement. He was closely associated with the Skamander group of lyrical poets. During the war, the non-Jewish Broniewski spent time in Jerusalem among Polish-Jews in exile. It was there where...
Read MoreThe Yiddishkayt Flash Fiction Contest
A Test of Endurance! Yiddish is a rich and expressive language, filled with maxims and humor, bearing linguistic marks of the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jews. While many Yiddish words and phrases have leaked into our modern vernacular: some useful (shlep), some coarse (shmok), some can end up misused and mangled (think choot•spa). Now, a Yiddish word peppering conversation is one thing, but as time goes on these words and phrases, stripped of their home language, start to lose their creative power and stop transmitting their original sense. Quite the opposite from English’s sticks...
Read MoreRemembering Soviet Yiddish
Two new books shine a light on the shadowy memory of Soviet Yiddish culture and literature.
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