Page 3 - Bashevis Singer News Today

Yaakov Schwartz is The Times of Israels deputy Jewish World editor. Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his Miami Beach apartment, October 10, 1978. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In 2014, author and literary scholar David Stormberg took his first trip to the archives at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, in search of material by the late Yiddish-language Jewish-American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. He hit the motherlode. “I was looking for Bashevis Singer’s essays becaus...

Read this article in Yiddish. Jewish crime ain’t what it used to be. In 1908, New York Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham caused a scandal when he asserted in an article in the North American Review that half the city’s criminals were Jews. The Jewish community was outraged and Bingham was forced to retract his statement. In fact, studies have long shown that Jews have a relatively low crime rate, lower than that of other religious groups. For much of their history, Jews were generally le...

Yiddish Is a Language of Faith Jewish Commentary Early in 2021, a niche online argument made its way onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal, complete with a catchy headline: “Designing a Flag for Yiddish Takes Chutzpah.” The cause of the disagreement was the announcement by Duolingo, a website for learning languages, that it would release a course for Yiddish. Usually, the symbol for a language would be the flag of its home country: France, Italy, Japan. Yiddish, however, was a la...

By Dr. Yvette Alt Miller/aish.com (printed with permission) | May 06, 2021 Duolingo, the popular language-learning app with a global following, recently made an exciting announcement: Users can now learn Yiddish, choosing to study Yiddish as little as five minutes a day, with fun lessons sent to their phones. I signed up for the course and loved hearing some of the initial Yiddish sentences. The first lesson featured Yiddish words that sounded much like English: “Mom, a balloon...

Jewish Ledger YI Love Yiddishfest – Purim Edition! The Yiddishkayt Initiative (“YI Love Jewish”) will serve up its first International VIRTUAL YI Love Yiddishfest – Purim Edition, Feb. 25-28. The event is being simultaneously streamed on the yilovejewish.org website, Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Virtual visitors of all ages will hear the story of Purim as they enjoy a wide range of FREE performances, concerts, readings and interviews, featuring major American a...

Jewish Ledger CELEBRATING PURIM! This year, Purim begins on Thursday evening, Feb. 25, and ends the evening of Feb. 26. Looking for some Purim fun? Check out one of the following events, all held virtually…and all guaranteed to get you in the Purim spirit. For a reading of Megilat Esther (virtual or otherwise), contact your local synagogue.  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 Purim Glow Party! Purim Glow Party, a drive-in family celebration featuring LED and fire show, outdoor Megi...

MEGILLAH Stay In Your House, Click Your Mouse … Virtual Festival Will Have It All, Including Dr. Seuss in Yiddish, from February 25-28, 2021 SOUTH FLORIDA – The holiday of Purim has often been called “the Jewish Carnavale,” with the joys of song, laughter and drama folded into one, like tangy, fruit-filled hamantashen. That’s just the recipe for a Yiddishe Taam that the Yiddishkayt Initiative (“YI Love Jewish”) will be serving up at its first annual International VIRTUAL YI Love...

Jewish Contributions to Humanity #9: Original research by Walter L. Field. Sponsored by Irwin S. Field. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991). b. Leoncin,

In his 1978 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer employed memories from his earliest years as a source of hope for coping with the troubles of modern times: “In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper,” he said. “In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up...