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Israeli Hebrew didn’t kill Yiddish. As a new exhibit in NYC shows, it gave it a new place to nest.
(New York Jewish Week) — Just before the end of the second millennium, Ezer Weizman, then president of Israel, visited the University of Cambridge to familiarize himself with the famous collection of medieval Jewish notes known as the Cairo Genizah. President Weizman was introduced to the Regius Professor of Hebrew, who had been allegedly nominated by the Queen of England herself.
Hearing “Hebrew,” the president, who was known as a sákhbak (friendly “bro”), clapped the professor on the shoulder and asked “má nishmà?” — the common Israeli “What’s up?” greeting, which some take to literally mean “what shall we hear?” but which is, in fact, a calque (loan translation) of the Yiddish phrase vos hért zikh, usually pronounced vsértsəkh and literally meaning “what’s heard?”
To Weizman’s astonishment, the distinguished Hebrew professor hadn’t the faintest clue what the president was asking. As an expert of the Old Testament, he wondered whether Weizman was alluding to Deuteronomy 6:4: “Shema Yisrael” (Hear, O Israel). Knowing neither Yiddish, nor Russian (Chto slyshno), Polish (Co słychać), Romanian (Ce se aude) nor Georgian (Ra ismis) — let alone Israeli Revived Hebrew — the professor had no chance whatsoever of guessing the actual meaning (“What’s up?”) of this beautiful, economical expression.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Yiddish and Hebrew were rivals to become the language of the future Jewish state. At first sight, it appears that Hebrew has won and that, after the Holocaust, Yiddish was destined to be spoken almost exclusively by ultra-Orthodox Jews and some eccentric academics. Yet, closer scrutiny challenges this perception. The victorious Hebrew may, after all, be partly Yiddish at heart.
In fact, as the Weizman story suggests, the enigma of Israeli Revived Hebrew requires an exhaustive study of the manifold influence of Yiddish on this “altneulangue” (“Old New Language”), to borrow from the title of the classic novel “Altneuland” (“Old New Land”), written by Theodor Herzl, the visionary of the Jewish state.
Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. Israeli Revived Hebrew is not “rétsakh Yídish” (Hebrew for “the murder of Yiddish) but rather “Yídish redt zikh” (Yiddish for “Yiddish speaks itself” beneath Israeli Hebrew).
That said, Yiddish had been clearly subject to linguicide (language killing) by three main isms: Nazism, communism and, well, Zionism, mutatis mutandis. Prior to the Holocaust, there were 13 million Yiddish speakers among 17 million Jews worldwide. Approximately 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers. Yiddish was banned in the Soviet Union in 1948-1955.
It is high time that a Jewish institution address the issue of Zionism’s attempted linguicide against Yiddish. I am therefore delighted to hear about YIVO mounting a fascinating and multifaceted exhibition in Manhattan titled “Palestinian Yiddish: A Look at Yiddish in the Land of Israel Before 1948,” which opens today. I commend Eddy Portnoy, YIVO’s academic advisor and director of exhibitions, for an exquisite exhibition on a burning issue.
Characterized by the negation of the diaspora (shlilát hagalút) and continuing the disdain for Yiddish generated by the 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment, Zionist ideologues actively persecuted the language. In 1944-5 Rozka Korczak-Marla (1921-1988) was invited to speak at the sixth convention of the Histadrut, General Organization of Workers, in the Land of Israel. Korczak-Marla was a Holocaust survivor, one of the leaders of the Jewish combat organization in the Vilna Ghetto, Abba Kovner’s collaborator, and fighter at the United Partisan Organization (known in Yiddish as Faráynikte Partizáner Organizátsye).
Left, “Di yidishe shtot Tel Aviv” (The Jewish City Tel Aviv), a Yiddish-language guidebook created by Keren Hayesod in Jerusalem, 1933. Right, wounded Yiddishists after an attack by Hebrew language fanatics, Tel Aviv, 1928. Ilustrirte vokh, Warsaw, Nov. 30, 1928. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
She spoke, in her mother tongue Yiddish, about the extermination of Eastern European Jews, a plethora of them Yiddish speakers. Immediately after her speech she was followed on stage by David Ben-Gurion, the first general secretary of the Histadrut, the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine and eventually Israel’s first prime minister. What he said is shocking from today’s perspective:
…זה עתה דיברה פה חברה בשפה זרה וצורמת
ze atá dibrá po khaverá besafá zará vetsorémet…
A comrade has just spoken here in a foreign and cacophonous tongue…
In the 1920s and 1930s, the Battalion for the Defense of the Language (Gdud meginéy hasafá), whose motto was “ivrí, dabér ivrít” (“Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew!), used to tear down signs written in “foreign” languages and disturb Yiddish theater gatherings. However, the members of this group only looked for Yiddish forms (words) rather than patterns in the speech of the Israelis who did choose to speak “Hebrew.” The language defenders would not attack an Israeli Revived Hebrew speaker uttering the aforementioned “má nishmà.”
Astonishingly, even the anthem of the Battalion for the Defense of the Language included a calque from Yiddish: “veál kol mitnagdénu anákhnu metsaftsefím,” literally “and on all our opponents we are whistling,” i.e., “we do not give a damn about our opponents.” “Whistling on” here is a calque of the Yiddish fáyfn af, meaning both “whistling on” and, colloquially, “not giving a damn about” something.
Furthermore, despite the linguistic oppression they suffered, Yiddishists in Palestine continued to produce creative works, a number of which are exhibited by YIVO.
Just like Sharpless, the American consul in Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera “Madama Butterfly,” “non ho studiato ornitologia” (“I have not studied ornithology”). I therefore take the liberty of using an ornithological metaphor: On one hand, Israeli Hebrew is a phoenix, rising from the ashes. On the other, it is a cuckoo, laying its egg in the nest of another bird, Yiddish, tricking it to believe that it is its own egg. And yet it also displays the characteristics of a magpie, stealing from Arabic, English and numerous other languages.
Israeli Revived Hebrew is thus a rara avis, an unusual and glorious hybrid.
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The post Israeli Hebrew didn’t kill Yiddish. As a new exhibit in NYC shows, it gave it a new place to nest. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israeli Consulate Officials Targeted in Boston With Flyers as Antisemitic Crime Wave Continues
A vigil for Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, both Israeli embassy staffers who were murdered by an anti-Israel activist, in Washington DC on May 22, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Anti-Israel activists in Boston targeted Israeli consulate staff this week by distributing a threatening flyer which included their pictures and names, potentially endangering them amid a recent surge in antisemitic violence across the US.
“They spread war into Syria, Lebanon, and now Iran,” the flyer said, according to multiple reports. “The people pictured above and other staff at the consulate work for the Israeli government. They advocate for laws to censor us. Their education initiatives obscure and cover up their crimes. Their economic missions fund genocide.”
It added, “Don’t work with them. Don’t help them. Tell them to leave Boston.”
The Consulate General of Israel to New England on Wednesday acknowledged the severity of the incident, noting that its connection to recent events is not lost on anyone.
“The consulate immediately notified local law enforcement agencies and is grateful for their swift response and continued cooperation, as well as their commitment to deepening security efforts around this matter,” it said in a statement. “This deplorable act is especially concerning in light of recent horrific incidents where anti-Israel incitement has escalated into antisemitism, hate crimes, and acts of violence and terror, including right here in our region.”
Only last month, two Israeli diplomats, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26 — a couple about to become engaged — were murdered as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old left-wing and anti-Israel activist from Chicago, was later charged in US federal court with murdering the embassy aides. According to witnesses and federal agents, he chanted, “Free, Free Palestine” — a war cry that has been a staple of the pro-Hamas movement.
An affidavit filed by federal authorities in support of the criminal complaint charging Rodriguez revealed that he also said at the scene of the shooting, “I did it for Palestine; I did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, injuring 15 people ranging in age from 25 to 88. Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was charged with attempted murder and a slate of other crimes. Prosecutors say he yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack. The suspect also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people,” according to court documents.
In Boston this week, one of the targeted officials, Consul General Benjamin Sharoni, issued a statement, saying that the flyer “is bullying, it is an intimidation, and a call to hostile action.” Meanwhile, the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said “it is deeply troubling in the current climate, where anti-Israel incitement has directly led to the brutal murder of two Israeli embassy staff members.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the American Jewish community has been battered by antisemitic hate incidents throughout the country, forcing law enforcement to stay hot on the trails of those who perpetrate them amid a wave of recent outrages.
On Tuesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland announced that it has charged Florida native Jackson Traylor, 26, with sending baleful antisemitic messages which alluded to Nazism and the Holocaust. If convicted of the crimes, he could spend up to two years in federal prison.
“Go burn in an oven like your ancestors,” Traylor allegedly texted his victim. “Burn in a god damn oven … Stupid Jew … Hey, Jew, been a while since we spoke. Let me burn you alive like your ancestors Hail Hitler.”
Earlier this month, an antisemitic letter threatening violence was mailed to a resident of the Highland Park suburb in Chicago. So severe were its contents that the FBI and the Illinois Terrorism and Intelligence Center were called to the scene to establish that there was no imminent danger, according to local news outlets. Later, the local government shuttered all religious institutions as a precautionary measure.
In New York City, where antisemitic hate crimes have been increasing year over year and leading the nation in the statistical category, an elderly man struck a Jewish woman with his cane after shouting “Stupid b—tch. Go back to your country” — as reported by the New York Post. He became even more animated after the helpless woman, who was alone on a subway platform, began recording the encounter with her smartphone. The New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Crimestoppers division has asked the public to come forward if they recognize the man, whose visage was captured in crystal clear screenshots pulled from footage of the attack.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—ck the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
Chilling data released by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in April revealed that antisemitism in the US is surging to break “all previous annual records.”
In 2024 alone, the ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents last year — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, an eruption of hatred not recorded in the nearly thirty years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The Algemeiner parsed the ADL data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
“This horrifying level of antisemitism should never be accepted and yet, as our data shows, it has become a persistent and grim reality for American Jewish communities,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish Americans continue to be harassed, assaulted, and targeted for who they are on a daily basis and everywhere they go. But let’s be clear: we will remain proud of our Jewish culture, religion, and identities, and we will not be intimidated by bigots.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Israeli Consulate Officials Targeted in Boston With Flyers as Antisemitic Crime Wave Continues first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Jewish Lawmaker Says He Was ‘Run Off the Road’ by Pro-Palestinian Activist
US Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) says in a video posted to social media that a pro-Palestinian activist ran him off the road. Photo: Screenshot
US Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) posted a video on X/Twitter on Friday morning saying that he was physically threatened by a pro-Palestinian activist.
Miller, who is Jewish, alleged that while driving to work, the activist forced his car off the road to show him a Palestinian flag and called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Miller added that the assailant threatened the lives of himself and his family.
“This morning, as I was driving to work, some unhinged, deranged man decided to lay on his horn and run me off the road when he couldn’t get my attention. Not to mention, ‘death to Israel,’ ‘death to me,’ that he wanted to kill me and my family,” Miller said.
The representative claimed that he obtained the identity of the suspect and that he will be pursuing legal action against him.
The deranged hatred in this country has gotten out of control. Today I was run off the road in Rocky River, and the life of me and my family was threatened by a person who proceeded to show a Palestinian flag before taking off. I have filed a police report with Capitol Police and… pic.twitter.com/H6JnupcRIA
— Max Miller (@MaxMillerOH) June 19, 2025
Miller, who represents the 7th Congressional District of Ohio, has positioned himself as one of Congress’s most outspoken pro‑Israel advocates. Since taking office in January 2023, he has sponsored multiple resolutions in support of Israel, including a July 2023 measure declaring it “not a racist or apartheid state.” He also co‑sponsored the Antisemitism Awareness Act, aligning US education policy with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
Miller has also been a vocal supporter of substantial US aid to Israel, backing the $26 billion supplemental package in 2024 that he helped guide through the House, and has denounced any Republican measures that tied Israel aid to US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cuts as “disgusting.” His stance extends to public commentary, where he has condemned Palestinian flag displays by Democrats and framed constraints on Israel’s military response to Iran and its terrorist proxy network as misguided.
In the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian activists have engaged in a great deal of violence in Ohio. According to Anti‑Defamation League (ADL) reporting, the Buckeye State has experienced a near-quadrupling of antisemitic hate crime cases — from 61 in 2022 to 237 in 2023. Notable incidents include vandalism at Ohio State University‘s Hillel Center, swastika carvings on trees in New Albany, and reported assaults on Jewish students. These incidents have prompted new state legislation to define antisemitism under the IHRA framework and expand ethnic-intimidation charges.
The post US Jewish Lawmaker Says He Was ‘Run Off the Road’ by Pro-Palestinian Activist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Argentina’s Milei Brands Iran an ‘Enemy,’ Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Israel Amid Escalating Conflict
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Argentine President Javier Milei has branded Iran “an enemy” of his country, reaffirming Argentina’s support for Israel amid its ongoing conflict with the Islamist regime in Tehran.
On Thursday, Milei — who has broken with decades of Argentine foreign policy to firmly align with Israel and the United States — condemned Iran’s attacks on the Jewish state.
“Iran is an enemy of Argentina,” the South American leader said during a new interview on the La Nación+ news channel.
| Milei recordó los atentados a la AMIA y a la Embajada de Israel y afirmó que Irán es un enemigo de la Argentina: “114 muertos. Es un enemigo de Argentina. Cristina va a tener que dar explicaciones a la Justicia por el Memorándum con Irán, y no sé si constituye traición a… pic.twitter.com/MKUgMmyr9p
— La Derecha Diario (@laderechadiario) June 20, 2025
According to local media, Milei spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to express his “support and solidarity” as the war continues to escalate.
In a statement issued last week, the Argentine leader denounced “the vile attack perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran against the State of Israel, through the mass launch of missiles and drones directed at civilian populations.”
He also said that Israel is “saving Western civilization” and accused Iran of trying to destroy the country.
During his interview on Thursday, Milei held Tehran responsible for two terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center.
The latter was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, in which 85 people were killed and more than 300 wounded.
Earlier this year, the lead prosecutor in the 1994 AMIA bombing case petitioned Argentina’s federal court to issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his alleged involvement in the deadly terrorist attack. Milei has also activated Interpol red notices in connection with the case.
In the same interview, Milei suggested that former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — may have committed treason by signing the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iranian authorities, which was presented as a cooperation agreement to investigate the AMIA bombing.
“Cristina is going to have to give explanations to the courts about the memorandum with Iran. I don’t know if it constitutes treason, but they planted two bombs in Argentina. That’s key,” the Argentine leader said.
In 2006, former prosecutor Alberto Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the 1994 terrorist attack and Iran’s chief proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused Kirchner of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in exchange for Iranian oil, with the alleged cover-up reportedly formalized through their MoU.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
During his latest interview, Milei also noted that his administration has officially designated Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations — making Argentina the first Latin American country to do so, with Paraguay joining the effort in April.
Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels.
This month, during his 10-day international tour, Milei was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize in Jerusalem in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel and commitment to Jewish values.
During his three-day visit to the Jewish state, Milei announced that Argentina will move its embassy to Jerusalem next year, joining the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea in doing so and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
The Argentine leader also signed a “Memorandum of Understanding for Democracy and Freedom” with Netanyahu to strengthen cooperation against terrorism and antisemitism.
The post Argentina’s Milei Brands Iran an ‘Enemy,’ Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Israel Amid Escalating Conflict first appeared on Algemeiner.com.