If you are interested in klezmer music and ashkenazi Jewish culture, check out the Radiant Others podcast. It features in depth interviews with klezmer musicians and scholars. This weeks episode is with Adrianne Greenbaum, a klezmer flautist! Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts and give us a follow on social media https://radiant-others-a.blubrry.net

A very interesting short video from YIVO on the standardization of Yiddish spelling and its significance to the language both before and after the Shoah.

https://youtu.be/xZyuPgCLZlw?feature=shared

Several editions of the book are digitized on the Yiddish Book Center website.

If anybody knows. I would appreciate where I can find it

Hi all,

I've had a pressing question about my ancestor's names.

Today in America, many non-orthodox jews have a "normal" name they use in everyday life for secular legal things and stuff like that, and a Hebrew name that they use in synagogue when making an aliyah or something else religiously significant.

Was this also the case in 19th/20th century Jews from "the old countries"?

For instance, one of my ancestor's names (from Lithuania) was Hirsch. Deer in Yiddish. Would Hirsch have had a Hebrew name as well, or would he have always gone by Hirsch, inside and outside of the synagogue?

יעדער איינער וויל אפלעקן א ביינדל

I’m going through some documents I found of my grand parents (immigrants to Canada from Poland in the 30s). Could someone give me a sense of the contents of this letter or document? It’s about 10 pages long.

Thanks in advance

So I'm talking to a hasidic friend of mine and I tell him that I've been learning yiddish and since then I have started to respond to yes and no questions in yiddish occasionaly.

So very simply: יאָ and ניין

My question is also simple. Is the prononciation for "יאָ" ya or yo?

My hasidic friend says its definitely ya, but when I challenged him on the written alef here and how it makes an "o" sound he didn't really have an answer for me.

Any clarity would be great. Thanks!

The site http://yidlid.org/ has been offline for quite a while now and this is such a loss.

For those who don't know this was a website where you could find lyrics to plenty of popular yiddish songs with both french and english translations, and some vocabulary as well. A real treasure for anyone interested in yiddish culture and language. (Some of it can still be found at internet archive and an older version of the site exists at a different adress so all is not lost)

I haven't written to the contact adress on the site because it is linked to the domain name itself, but I've been preoccupied for a while now, does anybody have information ?

Hello! I am desperately trying to find sheet music for the Yiddish art song, "Ergets vayt" by Lazar Weiner. I found options for the Volume 4 sheet music which is great and all, but I believe this song is in Volume 9 and I can't find it anywhere. If anyone knows what I should do please let me know! I have looked at what feels like every possible website, but maybe I'm missing something. I really want to learn and perform this song for my music studies at school. Thank you!!! (Ps: I may post this on a couple other Jewish/Yiddish themed subs as well to widen the likelihoods of someone knowing where to find it).

Hello! Might be a little bit of a weird request but I was wondering if anyone could help me at all with this yiddish lullaby, lyalkele (this one https://open.spotify.com/track/3sgQK188PINLZi4H3xof8V?) I literally couldn't find any information about it online. The closest I could find was a transliteration of the first line, "dayn mame vigt dikh itser tsu." And I know lialkele is little doll. But I would really appreciate anything anyone has, transliteration or translation! Thank you

Or even if the choice was just between Yiddish and German - which one would be better to learn first/be more beneficial to learning the other?

My grandmother recently passed and we've been going through old family documents and found what looks like it might be a letter to/from her father. I've been trying to translate, but I can't quite make out his handwriting. If anyone can translate this, I'd grately appreciate it.

I was told by an old timer from Eastern Europe that the way they checked where someone was from was by one's word for "cucumber" and "steam locomotive ". What are their variants in Yiddish?

Thank you!

I see this as a question, but if something is wrong about my Yiddish or you don’t understand what I want to say please tell me.

שלום־עליכם,

קען מיר ביטע עמעצער זאָגן װאָס די אַרויסרעדן פֿון שותּפֿות און שותּפֿותן זענען?

יעצט שױן א שיינעם דאַנק

שלום עליכם!

I work at an archive, and we recently found a letter in what I'm pretty sure is Yiddish in our collection. It's from Poland shortly after WW1.

I've been trying to learn Yiddish off-and-on for a few years now, and have given my best shot at transcribing the envelope and beginning of the text, but would appreciate other sets of eyes.

I don't have much prior experience with handwritten Yiddish, and I'm very aware that I may be trying to shoehorn these marks into my expectations of what they represent.

https://preview.redd.it/l03lrryw08fe1.jpg?width=1700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7d80c9fbb9af5ee40b39f8689af77c69fa4eebd2

I believe this envelope says:

איבערגעבן דעם בריוו

מײַן ברודער
דוד ???
איך ווייס ניט גוט זײַן אַדרעס

(Hand this letter over to my brother David [???]; I don't know his address well

https://preview.redd.it/9dspn7eg08fe1.jpg?width=2317&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b9dcb42b022f2d746b8aed424b07c868bf293a5

The letter itself is trickier; my best guess is that it starts

טײַערער שוואָגער דוד און ??? אונ ¿קינדערלעך?

אומ__אנטערהייד שרײַב איך צו אײַך. אײגענטליך האָב איך קיין ...
ניט צו שרײַבן צו אײַך. דאָס הײַסט ניין מ___ ¿רייט?
ג__ ווי זאָגט מענ נייט ¿ברייט? אַ__ איך בין א_נגער מענש איך
דאַרף ¿נאָך? ??? ??? מיט מײַנע הענצ ??? זיינענ ¿נאָך? ¿גאָט?
צו דאַנקן ג___טע אף אויסהאלט מײַן ??? און קינדער

Any assistance appreciated

EDIT: Oops, the original images I uploaded were quite blurry. I've replaced them with higher-res versions

My friend’s family commonly use a word they say is a Yiddish slang term, about which I am very curious.

They only ever used it verbally, and have it from casual usage through generations (their dad remembers his grandad using it) so they haven’t seen it written and even disagree with how to spell it.

The term is for someone who they consider to be a bit of a layabout, oaf or a waster. The word is (or sounds like) ‘Rils’ or ‘Krils’ or halfway, ‘Hrils.’

The ‘s’ ending sounds like ‘-ilce’ in English, not the voiced ‘z’ sound of the English plurals.

I haven’t been able to find it in any Yiddish dictionaries or slang resources. I would be really grateful for any suggestions, as it might be a bastardised or adapted version of something.

Any ideas gratefully accepted! Thank you!

Sholem aleykhem,

I came across שותּפֿון in this Forward article: https://forward.com/yiddish/691192/what-activists-for-at-risk-languages-can-learn-from-each-other/ . The complete sentence is :

אַ דאַנק טעכנאָלאָגישע שותּפֿותן און צוזאַמענפֿאָרן קענען אַקטיװיסטן פֿאַר כּלערלײ שפּראַכן זיך הײַנט טײלן מיט פּראַקטישע עצות.

I found the word שותפותא with the plural שותפותא on wiktionary from aramaic (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/שותפותא). It has the same meaning as the integrated dictionary of the Forward states for the word שותּפֿותן. So probably the yiddish word comes from this aramaic word. In my understanding yiddish usually uses the same plural forms as the words in loshn koydesh. If this is true שותּפֿותן can not be the plural of the word שותפטתא. Can somebody please explain what is going on?

אַ דאַנק

Hey guys, I found an image of my grandpa and this is what's written behind it. Can anyone translate? Thanks! 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfUQ3WPGHO8

The passage comes from chapter 12 of The 23rd Psalm by George Salton (page 123 for me)

“Shtein, tayere shtein du bist ein moel my mein Mamyniu gevein, Dos ganze leben vot ich aveg-gegeben ob, dich my Mamyniu, noch ein mal zu sein. [Stone, dear gravestone, at one time you were my dear mother. The rest of my life would I give away to see you, my mother, one more time.]”

I’ve tried every string of words I could think of using the English translation provided, the lyrics, and any other key phrases that might’ve helped, but I’ve yet to come across anything that matches.

My jewish grandmother (born in the early 1900's of german + polish decent) used to sing this song to me at bedtime when I was little. She's long gone now along with any other family that can help me identify the song's name / origin / etc. I've tried on and off for years to identify it on my own but have had little to no luck. I *think* it's yiddish with possibly some german mixed in but I could be completely wrong.

If anyone can help me identify this song, I would be eternally grateful!

https://cubeebuc.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/misc/bedtime_song.mp3