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#yiddish
rotzaprachim · 2 days
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Massive archive of a newspaper written specifically for Yiddish learners! Glosses at the bottom of the page for more difficult words and grammar
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inklingm8 · 2 days
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מיר זענען נישט פאַראַנטוואָרטלעך פֿאַר דיין האַס We are not responsible for your hate
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yiddisheyfe · 3 months
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פֿון פֿאָרווערטס, נאָוועמבער 19, 1936
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salvadorbonaparte · 6 months
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Help save the Yiddish Translation Fellowship Program
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I wanted to ask my followers and fellow language enthusiasts to donate to the Yiddish Book Center so that they can continue to train translators and make Yiddish literature accessible (or at least share this post if possible) 🐐
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winnifredburkle · 1 year
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Insults will be their own poll lol
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nesyanast · 4 months
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“Yentl—you have the soul of a man.”
“So why was I born a woman?”
“Even Heaven makes mistakes.”
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Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer
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robot-roadtrip-rants · 2 months
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I remember reading somewhere about an old Yiddish curse that went, "May a child be named after you." For the unaware, Ashkenazi Jews name their children after dead people.
I love this curse so much. Every time I remember it, it fills me with wicked glee. "May a child be named after you." The subtlety! The viciousness! The fake well-wishing! What a delightful way to tell someone to go fuck themselves!
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bubbbeleh · 3 months
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Some of you need to re-evaluate the way you talk about Yiddish because it's getting weird.
Disclaimer: Yiddish is my native language. I was forced to stop speaking it at a very young age and am only now getting back into it. I am very immersed in the academic discourse and am sick and tired of it.
I've been seeing people pitting Hebrew and Yiddish against each other for ages, and it is truly disgusting.
Yiddish has a difficult standing in Israel. It was the language of a large part of the Jewish people killed during the Shoah. But, contrary to popular belief, it is not a dead language.
Pitting Hebrew and Yiddish against each other is counterproductive at best, but also really dangerous. I've been called a traitor for learning Yiddish "in a time like this". I've been told that it's a useless language, that I would be much better off learning modern Hebrew. And I see all of the bad-faith takes from goyim, switching back and forth between painting Ashkenazi Jews as the ultimate Evil and vilifying (((the Zionists))) for 'erasing' Yiddish culture in Israel.
I have had the privilege of meeting and working with Mendi Cahan, founder of Yung Yidish Tel Aviv, who is one of the most inspiring people I've met. His life's work is a collection of Yiddish books, about 80.000 volumes strong, located in the Bus Station in Tel Aviv. And as he put it, it's easy to give into the hopelessness, that such a huge chuck of that culture was killed. But we cannot let that happen. Yiddish is alive and well. Native speakers exist and if you genuinely, truly want to help maintain it, there are ways for you to do that:
YIVO
Yiddish book center
Yung Yidish Tel Aviv
Medem Library
Video of Mendi Cahan talking about Yiddish culture in Israel (German website with German subtitles but the video itself is in English)
If you don't have anything productive to say, don't say anything.
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tikkunolamresistance · 4 months
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We think that it’s worth noting that the Soviet Union actually preserved the Yiddish language.
Whilst it’s true that Jewish life under the Soviet Union was far from perfect, and thus eligible to be critiqued — the diasporic Yiddish language would NOT have survived the Holocaust if it weren’t for the USSR’s support. There was a Yiddish language magazine called “Sovietish Haimland”, from 1961, which published Jewish art, which was particularly encircling Jewish culture. It also carried Yiddish lessons in a serialized textbook. 100s of Yiddish established writers contributed to this magazine. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this magazine no longer recieved that same state support and came to an end.
Again, we cannot act like the Soviet Union were perfect. The USSR was far from it. it is there that we can see where to learn from, where to do better. Communists look at history to learn from it; we see where mistakes were made even by our forefathers that tried to implement revolutionary reforms.
But the USSR actively combatted the Nazi’s attempts to systemically destroy the Yiddish language— and that is noteworthy.
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This is from “Soviet but Not Russian: The ‘Other Peoples of the Soviet Union” by William Mandel. We are working on getting this PDF resource in our Drive, along with a Soviet Union section, if people would like to read it themselves.
We must look at our history, especially at our Communist forefathers, and assess what we need to work on as a society to truly liberate everyone from the tyranny of Capitalism. Looking to the Soviet Union, we can see many examples of great progress made as much as we can see great losses.
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vetyr · 1 year
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The lake scarlets the same instant as the maple. Let others try to say this is not passion.
Personal piece! Email [email protected] for commission inquiries :)
Translation of Yiddish in bottom right: "But if you take an axe to your syllables, your sounds, // I will dance out from their ruins and capture you once more."
Transliteration (may have switched a letter or two: "Nor vesti mit a hak tseshpaltn dayne zilbn, klangen, // Ikh vel fun zay aroystantsn un vel dikh vider fangen."
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jouissanceangel · 5 months
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FRIENDS — PLEASE SHARE!
The Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center in the Bronx was recently the victim of antisemitic vandalism. They have started a GoFundMe to cover cleaning costs. They need our help! The center is a vital Yiddishist organization that has been serving New York for over 50 years, and they are in desperate need of financial assistance. Please reblog and share widely!!!! A gitn shabes.
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anti-subtle-b · 11 months
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I don't know if I can ever fully express how much I love and appreciate Yiddish loanwords
It's so wonderful how plosive they are and how accurate they feel. My brain is going kaput today! I will futz around my house! I love my little tchotchkes!
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hindahoney · 1 year
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If you want to code-switch so often that you are nearly incomprehensible to goyim, here is a list of my favorite and most-used Jewish terms:
Schvitzing - Sweating. (Ex: "I'm schvitzing so much it's showing through my clothes.")
Schlep - A tedious and long journey, depending on usage it can mean that you were carrying something. (Ex: "I had to schlep all the way across campus, my backpack was so heavy." Usually denotes a long walk, but other forms of transportation are acceptable too. "You drove all the way to New York from Florida? That's quite the shlep.")
Shtati - Something really cool. (Ex: "I visited my friend's place and they had a shtati mezuzah!")
Neshama - Soul. (Ex: "Mazel tov on your conversion, you have such a strong Jewish neshama!")
Balagan - A big mess, chaotic, confusing (Ex: "Moshe forgot to bring challah for shabbat dinner, and it turned into this big balagan")
Achi/Achoti - "Achi" literally means "my brother," but can also be used like bro or dude, "achoti" is the feminine equivalent meaning "sister"
Yalla - Come on, let's go (Ex: "Yalla yalla, you're going to make us late again")
Mishpacha - Family. Doesn't have to be literal blood relatives, usually a sign of warmth or friendship. (Ex: "I care about every Jew, they're all my mishpacha.")
Pshhh - Interjection sound, to express respect or agreement with what someone is saying, but can also be playfully poking fun at someone taking themselves too seriously, can be used sarcastically.
Achla - amazing, awesome, great, the best (Ex: "You graduated from university? Achla!")
Sheina Punem (Shayna Punim) - Pretty face (Ex: My bubbe kept pinching my cheeks and calling me a sheina punem) Can be used ironically, in which case it means "a disgrace."
Ahavat Yisrael - to love your fellow Jew (Ex: "I firmly believe in ahavat yisrael, even if it's hard sometimes.")
Schande - Shame, dishonor among the nations, meaning a Jew who represents Jews badly, a serious insult. (Ex: "He's a schande, he feeds into antisemitic stereotypes.")
Schmutz - Dirt, stain. (Ex: "Use your napkin, you've got schmutz on your face.")
Amalek - Any enemy of the Jewish people. ("[Fill in blank] is the modern Amalek, they hate the Jews.")
Lanceman/Landsmen - Two jews from the same place, a point of connection between two Jews who now live far away from their hometown. (Ex: "Your grandma is from Crown Heights? Mine too, our grandparents are landsmen!")
Goyisch - Something not Jewish (Ex: "I don't listen to Taylor Swift, her music is too goyisch for me.")
Goyischekop/Goyische-kop - Goyisch head, a jew who thinks/sounds like a non-jew. (Ex: "How could you say about your fellow Jew? Do you have a goyische-kop or something?")
Kindaleh/Kinderlach - Little children (Ex: "I passed by the school and saw the kindaleh on the playground, they're so cute!")
Chamud/Chamuda/Chamudi - Sweetie, cutie, usually aimed at children, but can be a term of endearment between a couple. Can be condescending when said rudely to another adult, like "Sweetheart" can be in English. (ex: "Goodnight, Chamudi. I can't wait to see you tomorrow.")
Daven - to pray ("Are you going to join us for davening?")
Frum - A religiously observant Jew. ("He's frum, he davens three times a day.")
Treif - Unkosher, generally something not good, doesn't have to literally refer to a food. ("I trained my dog to stop barking when I say 'treif!'.")
Bubkis - Zero, nothing, nada ("Moshe got a gift from bubbe and I got bubkis.")
Kvetch - To complain ("I'm just kvetching, I'm not that upset about it.")
Kvell - Extreme pride. ("I heard your daughter made it into her top school, you must be kvelling!")
Mensch - A good, admirable person. ("He volunteers every week, he's a mensch.")
Chillul HaShem - Disgracing God's name, someone who does something that makes Jews look bad.
Kiddush HaShem - Something that sanctifies God's name, brings honor to God. ("I love seeing you wear a kippah, it's a kiddush HaShem!")
Bubbe meise - Little white lies ("He told his teacher a bubbe meise about his dog eating his homework.")
I should acknowledge that these are mostly Yiddish words, as my experience is primarily with Ashkenazi Jews. If you would like to add common slang from your community (like Ladino phrases, Judeo-Arabic, Italki, etc) I would love to learn about them!
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zahut · 2 years
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“There’s a great Yiddish expression that says, “If I knew God, I’d be God.” In fact, I think that claiming that you “know God’s will” is an act of incredible hubris. Instead, what we say about God has much more to say about us than about God. There are, in fact, a whole range of different theologies within Judaism (you can find some of them in the terrific books “Finding God” and “The God Upgrade,” both of which describe a whole range of differing, and sometimes even conflicting, theologies.) And while I can only speak personally here, to me, “God” isn’t really a noun at all—it’s a verb. Here’s why. The most common name that God gives Godself in the Torah is “YHWH,” a name that is sometimes thought to be so holy that no one was allowed to pronounce it. But that’s not exactly right—it’s not that “YHWH” was not allowed to be pronounced, it’s that it is literally unpronounceable, since it consists of four Hebrew vowels (yod, hay, vav and hay). By the way, that’s also why some people incorrectly call this name “Yahweh,” since (as Rabbi Lawrence Kushner once said), if you tried to pronounce a name that was all vowels, you’d risk serious respiratory injury. But even more importantly, the name YHWH is actually a conflation of all the tenses of the Hebrew verb “to be.” God’s name could be seen as “was-is-will be,” so God isn’t something you can’t capture or name—God is only something you can experience. And indeed, when Moses is at the burning bush, having just been told by God that he will be leading the Israelites out of Egypt, he says, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God responds that God’s name is “Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” which is often translated as “I am what I am.” But it could also be translated as, “I am what I will be.” So God is whatever God will be—we simply have no idea. Indeed, for my own theology, I believe that God is found in the “becoming,” transforming “what will be” into “what is.””
— Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman
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varenychenko · 3 months
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every once in a while i see ukrainians confused about борщ being spelled as borscht and trying to correct it to borshch instead, but the english name and spelling for it comes from yiddish באָרשט/borsht as it was ashkenazi jews that brought the dish to north america and popularized it in english-speaking world. so really there's nothing to correct, it's just natural linguistic evolution as a result of cultural exchange! i for one really like how the etymology shows the history of borsht :)
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nesyanast · 5 months
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On November 23, 1909, more than twenty thousand Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history. The young strikers’ courage, tenacity, and solidarity forced the predominantly male leadership in the “needle trades” and the American Federation of Labor to revise their entrenched prejudices against organizing women. The strikers won only a portion of their demands, but the uprising sparked five years of revolt that transformed the garment industry into one of the best-organized trades in the United States.
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