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7 standout items from a new exhibit celebrating Yiddish New York
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City has no shortage of collections preserving the Yiddish culture that flourished here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are Yiddish theater collections at the New York Public Library and the Museum of the City of New York. Columbia University has extensive Yiddish holdings.
And then there is the granddaddy (or should we say zayde) of them all, the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the largest collection of Yiddish-language works in the world.
The Jewish Theological Seminary, meanwhile, is better known for its vast holdings of Hebrew manuscripts and books, Jewish marriage contracts, rare maps, legal documents and other Judiaca.
A new exhibit, however, is drawing attention to some of the Yiddish treasures in the JTS library, especially those reflecting the political and cultural ferment of the 2 million Eastern European Jews who arrived and thrived in New York between 1880 and 1924.
“It’s about the lives of Yiddish speakers and the legacy that lives beyond them,” said David Kraemer, librarian and professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, referring to the title of the exhibit: “Living Yiddish in New York.” He curated the exhibit along with guest curator Annabel Cohen, a PhD student in Modern Jewish History at the seminary, and Naomi Steinberger, director of Library Services at JTS.
The exhibit, whose scope ends before the Holocaust and the post-war boom in Yiddish among the city’s Hasidic Jews, opens April 20 and runs through August 10.
Kraemer gave us a tour of the exhibit this week; here’s a look at seven standout items and what they say about New Yorkers who lived and dreamed in Yiddish.
The allure of America
Sh. L. Hurvits (trans.) “Binyamin Franklins lebns bashraybung un di bafrayung fun amerike” (Benjamin Franklin’s life and the liberation of America). Warsaw, 1901. (JTSA)
A Yiddish-language biography of Benjamin Franklin, printed in Warsaw in 1901, is the only item in the exhibit that was created overseas. “The Yiddish-speaking communities of Eastern Europe imagined America as ‘di goldene medine’ — the golden land. It held for them a promise and part of the promise emerged from the fact that they knew something about American founding principles,” said Kraemer. Right next to the Franklin biography is an anonymous poem gently mocking that notion as dreams gave way to reality.
Becoming Americans
Alexander Harkavy, “Der Amerikanisher lerer” (The American teacher of the English language and American institutions). New York: J. Katzenelenbogen, 1897. (JTSA)
The linguist and philanthropist Alexander Harkavy, himself a Russian-Jewish immigrant, created a series of educational guides to help Jewish immigrants acclimate in their new homes, including this Yiddish-English phrasebook in 1897. The Workmen’s Circle, meanwhile, created a vegetarian cookbook for immigrants in 1926, part of a wide effort connecting healthy eating with progressive politics.
Old World meets New
Postcard: “In der heym iz er geven a shuster, in nyu york paskent er shale” (At home he was a cobbler, in New York he’s an expert in Jewish law). New York: Der groyse kundes. (JTSA)
The exhibit includes blown-up images taken from postcards in the JTS collection suggesting the changes ahead for new immigrants. In one cartoon, created in 1908, an immigrant who was a respected rabbi back in Europe is reduced to peddling in the United States. In the image above, however, the joke is reversed: “At home he was a cobbler, in New York he’s an expert in Jewish law.” In a religious desert like America, the cartoon suggests, even an average Jewish education makes you a sage.
That’s entertainment!
Left: Sheet music for “Der kleyner milioner” (The little millionaire), undated. New York: Trio Press Inc. Right: Sheet music for “Mamenyu,” or “Mother Dear,” mourning the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire victims. New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1911. (JTSA)
“The Yiddish theater culture in New York was extraordinary,” said Kraemer. At its height, the “Yiddish Rialto” – the theater district located primarily on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, but extending to Avenue B, between Houston Street and East 14th Street in the East Village — could boast as many as 30 performances a night. The exhibit includes sheet music for popular songs, from a ditty about “The Little Millionaire” to a song composed in mourning for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which caused the deaths of 146 garment workers in 1911.
Getting organized
“Konstitushon fun Hoshter Sosayti” (Constitution of the Hoshter Society). New York. Sloane Print Co., 1929. (JTSA)
Immigrants organized a huge network of mutual aid societies, affinity clubs for Jews from the same towns in Europe (landsmanschaften) and political clubs. Jews from Hoshcha in Ukraine organized a “Hoshter Society” and wrote up this “constitution” for members. “They learned from the American model: you create an organization, you write a constitution,” said Kraemer.
Getting radical
Der hamer (The Hammer). New York: Freiheit, May 1926. (JTSA)
A number of items in the exhibit demonstrate the leftist politics of many of the Yiddish-speaking immigrants. “This reflects the worlds that they came from, where these same ideas were obviously fermenting very powerfully at the time,” said Kraemer. “It also reflects the composition of the community. Many of them were very, very impoverished and living under difficult conditions. And as workers living in impoverished conditions, they were attracted to socialism, even to communism.” “The Hammer,” above, published in May 1926, was the monthly magazine of the communist daily Di Morgn Freiheit.
Teach your children
Nokhem Vaysman, “Di balade fun undzer kemp” (The Ballad of our Camp). New York: Union Square Press Inc., c. 1926. (JTSA)
Even as parents were succeeding in assimilating, many didn’t want their Americanized children to forget Yiddish language and culture. Yiddish publishers and educators responded with publications, Yiddish schools, camps and resources, like this children’s songbook created in 1926 for Jewish campers by a teacher at the Workmen’s Circle and the International Workers’ Order Yiddish schools.
“Living Yiddish in New York” runs April 20–Aug. 10 at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway. Register here for guided exhibit tours being held in May, June and July.
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The post 7 standout items from a new exhibit celebrating Yiddish New York appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Germany has found the culprit behind a deadly antisemitic arson fire. It still hasn’t learned its lesson.
The only way out of the Jewish old-age home at Reichenbachstrasse 27 in Munich ran through a four-story wooden stairwell. On the evening of Feb. 13, 1970, someone soaked that stairwell with gasoline and set it on fire.
It became a chimney. Flames and smoke raced upward, cutting off the residents above. Firefighters rescued many of the roughly 30 people inside, but seven Jewish residents aged 59 to 71, died. 15 people were injured, four seriously. All seven victims had survived Nazi persecution. Auschwitz had been liberated just 25 years earlier.
For 56 years, no one could identify the culprit.
In August, the Munich General Prosecutor’s Office announced that it now believes a right-wing extremist started the fire. Earlier this year, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel identified him as Bernd V., providing only his first name and last initial in accordance with German privacy laws. Der Spiegel also ran a black and white police photo of the suspect. It shows a man with a broad forehead, deep-set eyes and weak chin, wearing an unsmiling, withdrawn expression. The caption read, “Raised with Love for the Führer.”
Bernd V. was 25 at the time of the arson attack and died in 2020. His death means there will be no trial, though prosecutors say the evidence now points clearly to his responsibility. They found no reliable evidence of accomplices.
After his death, a woman contacted authorities and told the police that Bernd V. and two other men had been involved in a botched burglary at a jewelry store close to the Jewish community center on the night of the attack. Bernd V. ranted to his accomplices that the Jews had everything while Germans like him had nothing and verbally threatened to set Jews on fire. Roughly 15 minutes later, the building at Reichenbachstrasse 27 was ablaze.
In April 2025, investigators in Munich reopened the case, which had been closed in 2017 for lack of evidence. Old acquaintances of Bernd V, including relatives of the woman who had provided the new statement and who corroborated her account, remembered a man with a deep hatred of Jews who was obsessed with Hitler. He played records of the Führer’s speeches and practiced shooting around Berchtesgaden, where Hitler once had an idyllic residence. As a juvenile, Bernd V. had been sentenced for blowing up two telephone booths.
More strikingly, he was not a new suspect in the arson case. A former cellmate from one of Bernd V.’s prison stints in the early 1970s told investigators that Bernd V. had boasted to him of carrying out the Reichenbachstrasse attack and described details that, according to prosecutors, were not publicly known. Prosecutors questioned Bernd V. in 1972; he denied involvement, and the case against him was dropped two years later for lack of evidence.
The Reichenbachstrasse fire changed Jewish life in Germany — and the long uncertainty about its perpetrator helped shape a comforting German story about the sources of postwar antisemitism.
Bernhard Purin, the founding director of Munich’s Jewish Museum, has called the attack, quite simply, “the rupture.” Purin, who died in 2024, explained in a 2020 interview that before Feb. 13, 1970, people entered Jewish community centers much as they entered Christian ones. Afterward came police cars, cameras and heightened security, including metal detectors. Jews in Germany drew the bleak conclusion that they could only live under protection.
That security regime has become so routine here that it passes for normal. Police officers and Israeli security stand guard outside synagogues and Jewish schools. Visitors pass barriers and identity checks before entering institutions devoted to worship, education and community.
Permanent security presence has an unintended consequence: It marks official Jewish life as something fundamentally separate from ordinary life. A synagogue behind police barriers may be safer, but that fortification tells Jews and non-Jews alike that Jewish institutions are a world apart.
The attack also has another legacy. Because nobody knew who committed it, the crime gradually became evidence in a wider argument about left-wing antisemitism. In 1969, German left-wing radicals planted a bomb that failed to detonate at the Jewish community center in West Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Parts of the revolutionary left embraced an anti-Zionism that could turn antisemitic. The Red Army Faction later celebrated the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972; German left-wing terrorists subsequently collaborated with Palestinian militants at Entebbe.
But the history of left-wing antisemitism gradually absorbed a crime for which no such attribution had been proved. It fed into the narrative that, as the political scientist Yascha Mounk put in his 2014 book Stranger in My Own Country, “since 1945, the Germans who have committed the most radical attacks on Jews were not right-wing radicals.” Many Germans found it psychologically convenient to believe that the Reichenbachstrasse victims had died at the hands of German antifascists rather than neo-Nazis.
The generation of 1968 performed an indispensable service by forcing West Germany to confront questions its parents had largely evaded: What had Germans done under Hitler? Why had former Nazis returned to positions of authority? What did Auschwitz demand of the generations that followed?
The discovery that some of those self-proclaimed antifascists themselves became antisemites produced a terrible historical irony. It also offered Germans a way to relocate antisemitism. The Jew-haters were now the rebellious children, the revolutionary leftists, the Palestinians and not necessarily the political descendants of the very people who had murdered Europe’s Jews.
Mounk himself called the radical left’s projection of fascism onto Jews and Israel a “psychological coping mechanism.” The apparent solution of the Munich case suggests a parallel mechanism in postwar Germany: antisemitism has often been easiest to recognize when it belongs to somebody else.
Today, that somebody else is frequently Muslim.
At the reopening of the Reichenbachstrasse synagogue last September, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz explicitly acknowledged that antisemitism “was never gone” from the Federal Republic. But within minutes he turned to immigrants, arguing that Germany had ignored the fact that a “considerable” number came from countries where antisemitism was effectively state doctrine. Months earlier, he had told Fox News that Germany suffered from “a kind of imported antisemitism.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jews in Germany have faced alarming hostility connected to Israel and Gaza, including from Islamist and radical anti-Zionist milieus. But that’s only part of the story. Germany’s principal civil-society monitoring network for antisemitism, RIAS, recorded 8,725 antisemitic incidents in 2025. It linked 807 of them to right-wing extremism, the highest number in that category since nationwide monitoring began. And Germany now has a far-right party of enormous electoral strength whose leading figures have repeatedly tested the boundaries of the country’s postwar taboos.
That party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is currently polling around 41% in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of next month’s state election. One of its most prominent politicians, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted for using the banned slogan of Hitler’s SA.
Fifty-six years after seven Jews died in a burning building, prosecutors now believe the likeliest perpetrator was a German neo-Nazi whose fanatical hatred had been visible for years. That finding comes too late to punish him. It does not come too late to unsettle the story Germans have often told themselves about the crime.
And the other legacy of that night remains all around us. The rupture of 1970 has never fully healed. German Jews still worship, study and gather behind cameras, guards and police barricades: constant reminders that Jewish life here is somehow separate.
The challenge is not only to safeguard Jewish life, but to stop treating permanent protection as its natural condition. That requires Germany to confront antisemitism wherever it appears, including on a resurgent far right whose danger is easier to minimize when attention is fixed elsewhere.
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Emil Kalin wins Mendele Prize for Yiddish Literature 2026
דער תּּל-אָבֿיבֿער שטאָטראַט האָט די וואָך אַנאָנסירט, אַז דער ייִדישער שרײַבער עמיל קאַלין האָט זוכה געווען צו באַקומען דעם מענדעלע-פּּריז פֿאַר ייִדישער ליטעראַטור. דעם פּרײַז טיילט די שטאָט אויס יעדע פֿיר יאָר פֿאַר בעלעטריסטיק, ליטעראַטור־קריטיק אָדער אַנדערע בײַטראָגן צו דער ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור.
דעם פּריז האָט מען אים געגעבן אין שײַכות מיט זײַן לעצטן ראָמאַן, „צוזאַמענבראָך“ (2025), וועגן אַ געוועזענעם חרדישן ייִד פֿון ירושלים, וואָס פֿאַרלאָזט זײַן פֿרוי און קינד און לאָזט זיך גיין אויף אַ קאָמפּליצירטן גײַסטיקן דרך. דאָס בוך איז דערשינען אין פֿאַרלאַג ייִדיש-בראַנזשע און לייוויק-פֿאַרלאַג, מיט דער שטיצע פֿון דער „נאַציאָנאַלער אינסטאַנץ פֿאַר ייִדישער קולטור“. מע קאָן עס קויפן דורך leyvik.org.
נישט לאַנג נאָך דער פּובליקאַציע פֿונעם ראָמאַן האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס־רעצענזענט מיכאל קרוטיקאָוו געשריבן וועגן דעם בוך, און בפֿרט וועגן דעם הויפּט־פּערסאָנאַזש, הערש, אַזוי:
קאַלין שילדערט סײַ מענטשן און סײַ לאַנדשאַפֿטן אָן קײן שום באַפּוצונג. ער איז אַ מײַסטער פֿון מעטאַפֿאָרישן אימאַזש, װאָס שאַפֿט אַ געהעריקע שטימונג. די שטאָט תּל־אָבֿיבֿ איז אַ מין לעבעדיקע, פֿיבערדיקע חיה, װאָס כאַפּט הערשן פֿעסט אַרום „מיט בײדע שװיציקע הענט.“ די אױטאָבוסן זײַנען „אומגעלומפּערטע יבשה־שיפֿן, װאָס שנײַדן זיך קױם דורך אַ װעג אין דער ברױזנדיקער באַװעגונג.“ ער אַנטלױפֿט קײן ירושלים מיט אַ האָפֿענונג, „אַז ירושלים װעט מיך דערהײבן מיט זיך, אָבער דאָס פֿאַרקערטע איז געשען: ירושלים האָט מיך דערנידערט, אַראָפּגעשלעפּט מיט זיך אין בלאָטע.״
די דרײַ ריכטער פֿונעם פּריז־קאָמיטעט — דבֿ־בער קאָטלערמאַן, דניאל גלאַי און נירה תּובֿל — האָבן געזאָגט, אַז קאַלינס בוך איז נישט בלויז זייער גוט געשריבן, נאָר איז אויך איינער פֿון די גאָר ווייניק מאָדערנע ראָמאַנען אויף ייִדיש, וואָס באַהאַנדלען טעמעס פֿון דער הײַנטיקער ישׂראלדיקער געזעלשאַפֿט.
אַחוץ „צוזאַמענבראָך“ האָט קאַלין אַרויסגעגעבן צוויי אַנדערע ראָמאַנען, און הײַיאָר וועט דערשײַנען זײַן פֿערטער. די אויסטיילונג וועט פֿאָרקומען דעם 1טן דעצעמבער 2026 אין עינבֿ-זאַל, וווּ עס וועט אויך בײַזײַן דער תּל-אָבֿיבֿער בירגער-מײַסטער רון חולדאי.
עמיל קאַלין איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין 1982 אין בוקאַרעשט, און האָט מיט זײַן משפּחה עולה געווען קיין ישׂראל אין עלטער פֿון 7 יאָר.
ער האָט פֿאַרענדיקט זײַנע הויכע לימודים אינעם העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט אין ירושלים, און האָט לאַנגע יאָרן געאַרבעט אין הײַטעק. הײַנט לערנט ער פּסיכאָלאָגיע אינעם תּל-אָבֿיבֿער אוניווערסיטעט.
קאַלין האָט אויך איבערגעזעצט אויף ייִדיש דאָס דײַטשישע בוך „דער גאַנג פֿון די הינט“, וואָס איז אַרויס דורכן פֿאַרלאַג „אָלניאַנסקי טעקסט“. זײַנע אַנדערע ביכער זײַנען אַרויס דורך די פֿאַרלאַגן „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“ און „ה. לייוויק“.
זײַנע קירצערע ווערק קען מען לייענען אינעם דיגיטאַלישן זשורנאַל „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“, רעדאַקטירט פֿון באָריס סאַנדלער.
אין יאָר 2025 איז ער פֿאַרבעטן געוואָרן אויף אַ טור אין אַכט שטעט אין דײַטשלאַנד, כּדי פֿאָרצושטעלן דאָס בוך „צוזאַמענברוך“.
ער וווינט אין תּל־אָבֿיבֿ מיט זײַן פֿרוי שבֿע כּהן און זייערע דרײַ קינדער.
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Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections
(JTA) — A Belgian union has threatened to strike against Brussels Airlines for compelling staff to work on flights to Israel, saying that anyone with “safety or conscientious objections” should be able to refuse.
ACV Puls, Belgium’s largest trade union, said on Tuesday that the company was breaking previous agreements to rely on volunteers for flights to Tel Aviv. The airline resumed flights to Tel Aviv on August 3, following a five-month pause because of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and its first flights were operated with volunteers.
“Serious concerns exist among the staff regarding both physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” ACV Puls spokesperson Jolinde Defieuw said in a statement. She added that making staffing mandatory was “particularly serious in the context of the ongoing war and the genocide in Gaza.”
ACV Puls, which represents aviation employees including pilots, cabin crews and ground staff in Belgium, said that a strike could follow if Brussels Airlines does not reverse its decision to resume regular staffing. The union argued that flying to Israel could not be deemed sufficiently safe, citing Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advises against “all non-essential travel to Israel and Jerusalem.”
They also said that workers should be able to decline the flights for ethical reasons. Those who have “safety or conscientious objections must be able to refuse these flights without financial, professional, or disciplinary consequences,” said the union.
Nico Cardone, a spokesperson for Brussels Airlines, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that safety was the company’s “highest priority, whether we operate with volunteers or not.” He added that the airline was “not a political party” and made decisions about flight operations based on safety and demand.
“We do not engage in political discussions about the governments of certain destinations, and we ask our staff to uphold this same professional standard,” said Cardone.
ACV Puls said the airline was compelling crews to work because it had not found enough volunteers. Cardone disputed that, saying the airline always aimed to return to regular crew scheduling over time.
Along with threatening a strike, the union called on the Belgian government to weigh in. ACV Puls said the government should take a stance on the availability of commercial flights to Israel “despite the ongoing war, the massive civilian casualties, and the serious accusations of war crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian population.”
Belgium has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Israeli settlements in the West Bank since 2023. Earlier this year, Belgium banned aircraft carrying military equipment bound for Israel from crossing its airspace. The government in July approved a ban on goods imported from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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