2/4 | Birthday of Georg Brandes
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 4 Birthday of Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes was born to a Jewish middle class family on February 4, 1842 in Copenhagen. He was educated in law and philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1862 he won the gold medal of the university for an essay on The Idea of Nemesis among the Ancients. Brandes was influenced by the writings of Heiberg, Søren Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill and the French critics Hippolyte Taine, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Ernest Renan. He adopted a broad, cosmopolitan view of...
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.
Read More
