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On stage and in the classroom, Mikhl Yashinsky is stoking the flame of the Yiddish revival
(New York Jewish Week) — In the Yiddish classes Mikhl Yashinsky teaches for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Workers Circle, he begins by asking students to explain why they decided to learn the language.
Often, a student will describe attending a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
This is literally music to the ears of Yashinsky, who not only teaches conversational Yiddish, translates Yiddish literature and writes Yiddish plays and videos, but who also played a beggar and innkeeper in the latest run of “Fiddler” in Yiddish, which closed on Jan. 1.
“Many thousands of people have seen Yiddish ‘Fiddler’ by now and it’s had a real impact on them and how they see the language,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “It makes me happy that one thing feeds into another.”
The 32-year-old Chelsea resident is in some ways the future of Yiddish, at least of the secular, artistic and academic variety that is spoken and studied outside of the haredi Orthodox community, where it is often the first language. While some Yiddishists bristle at the notion that the language of Ashkenazi Eastern Europe is undergoing a “renaissance,” figures like Yashinsky are making sure the language continues to flourish in communities beyond the yeshiva.
”Mikhl has played a very big role in my Yiddish journey,” said Judith Liskin-Gasparro, a retired linguistics professor from the University of Iowa. Liskin-Gasparro had four grandparents who were native Yiddish speakers but who never spoke the language in front of her. She estimates that over the course of her career she’s watched 1,000 people teach a language class. After studying with Yashinsky remotely from Iowa City for five semesters, Liskin-Gasparro said: “I have rarely seen anybody as good as he is.” His YIVO course has been so popular that YIVO had to create a second section.
Liskin-Gasparro now describes herself as obsessed with the language. In November, she made the trek to New York to see Yashinsky perform in “Fiddler.” During her visit she joined about 15 people from Yashinsky’s YIVO class to meet her teacher in person.
Yashinsky, who grew up outside of Detroit, credits his late maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Elkin Weiss, with putting him on the path to becoming a Yiddishist. Weiss and her husband Rube were veterans of Yiddish theater, performing on stage and the radio. His grandmother also performed in English-language radio dramas, and her ability to do accents and characters earned her the nickname “The Woman of 1,000 Voices.” A radio ad in which Weiss imitated the Hungarian Jewish actress Zsa Zsa Gabor convinced customers of an Italian restaurant in the Detroit area that Zsa Zsa herself had done the commercial.
Talent ran in the family, sometimes in unexpected ways: Yashinsky’s uncle, David Weiss, was one-half of Was (Not Was), a major funk-rock band in the 1980s and ’90s. David’s partner, Don Was, is celebrating his 30th year as a record producer for The Rolling Stones.
Yashinsky studied modern European history and literature at Harvard, attended the Vilna Yiddish Language Institute and in 2015-16 worked as a fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass. In 2018, Yashinsky performed in the held-over runs of Yiddish “Fiddler “at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, then left New York for a steady gig teaching Yiddish at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He rejoined the musical when it was staged in 2019 at Stage 43, the largest off-Broadway theater in the city.
Joel Grey, the director of Yiddish “Fiddler,” wrote in an email: “Mikhl is one of the most resourceful and delightful actors I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. He has more ideas for a moment than most actors do in a lifetime.”
Jackie Hoffman, the comedian and Broadway veteran who played Yenta the matchmaker in earlier runs of Yiddish “Fiddler,” said Yashinsky “is a truly Yiddish soul. He’s like someone who could’ve crept out of the 19th century. It’s like Yiddish is in his blood.”
Mikhl Yashinsky, center in gray apron, played Mordkhe the Innkeeper in “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. (Jeremy Daniel)
Steven Skybell, who played Tevye in in the latest Yiddish “Fiddler,” attended Yashinsky’s classes for a few semesters, which enabled him to converse with Yashinsky in the mamaloshn (mother tongue) backstage.
Yashinsky’s mother in Michigan, who did not grow up speaking Yiddish, has attended all five semesters via Zoom. Debra Yashinsky, who said she can’t begin to count the number of times she’s seen Yiddish “Fiddler,” used her maiden name in the Zoom interface for the first two semesters.
“Mikhl once asked me, ‘Mom, are you taking the class to learn Yiddish or do you just enjoy seeing me teach?’” she recalled. “I didn’t know the right answer. The truth is I love seeing his punim [face] for an hour and a half and kvelling [being proud] while I watch him teach.”
In addition to teaching and acting, translation has been a big part of Yashinsky’s devotion to the language (and need to earn a living).
He has a deadline looming at the end of January for his translation of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, the Polish-Jewish actress considered the “mother of Yiddish theater.” He’s been working on the project for a few years and could often be found backstage at “Fiddler” translating a couple of sentences at a time between scenes.
Yashinsky has also been translating short stories by the Nobelist Isaac Bashevis Singer for a forthcoming anthology of the author’s early works. He describes them as “little gems” Singer wrote when he was a young writer that have never been translated into English. Yashinsky said he has translated three or four of the short stories so far.
Yashinsky is also a playwright whose Yiddish play, “Vos Flist Durkhn Oder” (“Blessing of the New Moon”), was performed at the Lower East Side Play Festival last summer. One of six plays chosen from more than 100 submissions, it was the only non-English play in the festival. The one-act play, set in a Lower East Side yeshiva in 1912, deals with the tradition of pranks that take place during the month in which Purim falls.
His full-length play “Di Psure Loyt Chaim” (“The Gospel According to Chaim”) will get a public reading this winter at the New Yiddish Rep in Manhattan. The play is based on the true story of Henry Einspruch, a Baltimore Jew who in the 1940s found Jesus and translated the New Testament into Yiddish for the purpose of converting his fellow Jews. Yashinsky said no Yiddish publisher would help Einspruch in his quest.
“I just thought that this was a very curious bit of history,” said the playwright. “It was really insidious in some ways. He was trying to convert Holocaust survivors in some cases. He would preach outside synagogues on Shabbos mornings.”
Yashinsky will be working on a Yiddish musical in 2023, thanks to a LABA Fellowship for Jewish artists. He plans to write the musical in collaboration with Mamaliga, a klezmer band based in Brooklyn and Boston. Yashinsky said he may write something about the underworld of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Another bright spot on the horizon: On Jan. 26 he’ll make his Carnegie Hall début, singing in a concert titled “We Are Here: Songs from the Holocaust,” which will feature Broadway stars Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera and Shoshana Bean. Yashinsky will perform “Zog nit keynmol” (“Never Say”), the anthem of the Vilna partisans.
And somehow Yashinsky will make time to produce more videos for the Workers Circle #YiddishAlive series on YouTube. Among the 11 videos he’s done so far are a Yiddish rendition of Tom Lehrer’s song “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” and a music video shot in Michigan to celebrate the strawberry harvest. That video featured “Trúskafke-vals” (“Strawberry Waltz”), a Yiddish song he wrote, as well as a strawberry cake baked by his mother.
He also produces humorous Yiddish music videos, including one based on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ demented, spooky classic, “I Put A Spell On You.” In his version, Yashinsky performs in drag as Bobe Yakhne, a sorceress he played in Folksbiene’s 2017 revival of the classic Yiddish operetta “The Sorceress.”
“This art form continues,” he said of Yiddish theater. “It’s a tradition that hasn’t evaporated and it’s nice to feel that I’m part of the continuity.”
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The post On stage and in the classroom, Mikhl Yashinsky is stoking the flame of the Yiddish revival appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Top PLO, Fatah Officials: Hamas Should Join Us, No Need to Disarm
Hamas police officers stand guard, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Palestinian Authority (PA) appears eager to hijack the Board of Peace’s UN Security Council-approved administration of Gaza and unite with Hamas to control the Strip themselves, according to comments made by a top PLO official in a new interview documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
According to Egyptian reports, PLO Executive Committee Secretary Azzam Al-Ahmad has been in Cairo meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Two informed Palestinian sources said Azzam Al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, held talks in Cairo with faction leaders including Hamas and Islamic Jihad about the two movements joining the PLO.
[Manassa.news (Egypt), Feb. 22, 2026]
Officials from the governing PA and its parent political body the Palestine Liberation Organization have been making repeated overtures to Hamas to join the PLO.
In November 2025, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub called on Egyptian help to “bridge the gaps” between Fatah and Hamas so they can unite against Israel.
The previous month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared “our hands are extended, and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas.”
The implicit hope behind the unity push is that move might satisfy international demands for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza. Back in October, Al-Habbash said that Hamas needed to disarm, but clearly the PA position has since softened. As a sweetener for Hamas to agree to join the PLO, the PLO says it is now ready to appease the terror group by allowing it to keep its weapons and remain an armed force on the ground.
The PA and PLO are aware that to legitimize absorbing Hamas into the PLO, Hamas – the perpetrators of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – must also be laundered of the stigma of being defined as a terror organization.
During al-Ahmad’s visit, he was interviewed by an Egyptian newspaper, tacitly confirming his mission:
They [US President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace] do not want Hamas to play any role in the Gaza Strip, and we reject this completely, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national activity. It is true that it has not yet joined the PLO, but we are in a constant national dialogue with them to complete what is required for their entry into the PLO. Therefore, all talk about disarming Hamas and it being a terror organization is unacceptable to us, because Hamas is not a terror organization. [emphasis added]
[Shorouk News (Egyptian paper), Feb. 23, 2026]
The immediate follow-up question in the interview was seen as so important by Al-Ahmad that he made it into a post for his Facebook page:
Shorouk News’ Mohammed Khayal: “You mean clearly that you in the PLO do not view Hamas as a terror organization?”
Azzam Al-Ahmad: “We have never viewed it as a terror organization, and we always oppose when a decision is made by any international institution or any government classifying them as a terror organization, because they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Azzam Al-Ahmed’s Facebook page, Feb. 23, 2026]
Lest anyone thought that Al-Ahmad had misspoken, his strong statement was soon backed by Rajoub:
“Fatah Central Committee [Secretary and] member Jibril Rajoub emphasized that [PLO Executive Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad did not err in defending the weapons of the Hamas Movement and stating that it is part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Shahed, independent Palestinian news website, Feb. 24, 2026]
Meanwhile, without referencing Al-Ahmad directly, Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki doubled down on the renewed push for unity with the Islamist terror groups.
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki emphasized that national dialogue among Palestinian factions, foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, constitutes a ‘necessary path and an urgent national need… The real enemy of this unity is the Israeli occupation, and those who stand behind it politically and militarily, foremost among them the US, which is working to rearrange the region in a way that will serve Israel’s sovereignty at the expense of the Arab and Islamic rights.’”
[Sanad News, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 26, 2026]
Statements like these are nothing new for PA or PLO officials, who have been making overtures to Hamas for years. Yet the timing and stridency of this particular effort is everything, as it seeks to directly undermine the Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement and Gaza reconstruction plan based on the establishment of a technocratic government.
A technocratic government, to be known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), was chosen as the most effective way to begin to restore services to Gazans, and that makes sense. It provides the administrative structure to deliver essential services while at the same time depriving oxygen to any resumption of warfare against Israel from the territory – at least the parts of Gaza that Hamas no longer controls.
While the PA has decided to go along with the plan, a recent letter from PA Vice Chairman Hussein Al-Sheikh welcoming a PA liaison office with the NCAG stressed the PA’s expectation that this was all just a “transitional” prelude to PA control.
“These constitute practical transitional steps that contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people and providing administrative and security services, without creating administrative, legal, or security duality among our people in Gaza and the West Bank, and while reinforcing the principle of one system, one law, and one legitimate authority over arms.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 21, 2026]
In the PA’s mindset, whatever moves can hasten the end of this transition, the better, as the notion of suspending conflict with Israel in any Palestinian-populated area even temporarily is anathema to the PLO and Hamas alike.
As evidenced by Al-Ahmad’s latest remarks and others, the PA and PLO have no problem whatsoever with Hamas’ zeal for terrorism – but only appear to differ with the Islamist terror group on who gets to decide when and how it is used.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israel Did Not Drag the US Into War
US President Donald Trump speaks with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during military operations in Iran, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, US. February 28, 2026. The White House/Social Media/Handout via REUTERS
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” President Donald Trump exclaimed to a journalist on March 3. He was answering a question posed by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott, who had just asked the Commander in Chief whether Israel had “pulled the United States into war.”
“Based on the way the negotiation [with Iran] was going, I think they were going to attack first,” Trump replied. “And I didn’t want that to happen.”
The President is completely right.
After a sound bite from Secretary of State Marco Rubio went viral, many on the isolationist right and the pro-Palestinian, “anti-war” left claimed that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, had dragged the world’s most powerful military into a regional conflict.
“We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio stated on March 2.
“So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand,” responded popular conservative pundit Matt Walsh in a post on X.
But, as often occurs in cyberspace, Rubio’s comments were taken wildly out of context.
During the same press conference, Rubio was asked a similar question again: “Was the US forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?” Rubio set the record straight unequivocally.
“No … No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen … This had to happen no matter what.”
The Secretary of State is correct. His answer about Israel triggering the operation implied that it was only a matter of when, not if, the mission would be undertaken by the US.
American military power had been amassing in the Middle East for months, and some reports said that planning for the combined strikes began as far back as December. Other reports suggested that the operation was intended to begin a week earlier, but the conditions weren’t right.
Intelligence provided to Israel by the Central Intelligence Agency, combined with actionable intelligence gathered for years by Israel’s Mossad, suggested that February 28, at around 10 am Tehran time, was the optimal starting line for the mission. Why? Because former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was due to meet with nearly 50 of his closest advisors and other senior leaders, above ground. According to The Wall Street Journal, those were the circumstances that nailed down a start date for the ongoing conflict.
That’s why commentators across the aisle got Rubio’s statement so very wrong. In fact, Israel has shown in the past that it would comply willingly should its friends in Washington wish for IDF military action not to go forward.
On June 24, 2025, the Israeli Air Force cancelled planned strikes on Iran after Trump announced that he had told Netanyahu to bring the pilots home and that a ceasefire was in place. The strikes were planned in retaliation for a vicious attack on a Beer Sheva residential building that killed several civilians. Even then, Israel respected the wishes of the United States.
The ongoing conflict in Iran is a combined effort between what US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Brad Cooper called, “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the US and Israel,” comments later echoed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. It began with full coordination and will end the same way.
As Hegseth said, “only the United States of America military could lead this — only us. But when you add in the Israeli Defense Forces — a devastatingly capable force — the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.”
Aaron Goren is a research analyst and editor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
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Shock and Resolve: Responsibility from Afar in Times of War
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
When my flight to Tel Aviv was canceled in Warsaw, the war had not yet officially begun. Airlines, however, often sense what governments have not yet declared. Within hours, Israel’s airspace closed. Soon after that, the Iranian missile barrage began.
I was en route to join 22 prominent social media voices from the United States and Europe at the Tel Aviv Institute, where I serve as president. We had convened them for four days of intensive work combating antisemitism — a phenomenon that does not subside during war, but metastasizes. Instead, I found myself watching from afar as our participants sheltered in place.
This is not about my disrupted travel plans. It is about what courage looks like when missiles are falling and what responsibility looks like when you are not physically present to hear the sirens.
Among those social media advocates on the ground was Hen Mazzig. His voice has reached millions with moral clarity and unapologetic conviction. When the missiles began, he did not retreat into silence. He did what he has always done: he spoke.
We were able to evacuate a small group of participants by chartered boat after 26 hours at sea. Among them were Karoline Preisler, a non-Jewish German politician and influencer, and Bernice Cohen, a dermatologist whose platform reaches well beyond the Jewish and Israeli ecosystem. Others remain in Israel, including Boston chef Ruhama Shitrit, who, between sleepless nights and repeated dashes to bomb shelters, continues to imagine new ways to present Jewish and Israeli life as vibrant, humane, and dignified — even under fire.
These are not soldiers. They are civilians — influencers, professionals, parents — demonstrating moral steadiness under extraordinary pressure.
If anything is deeply embedded in Jewish consciousness, it is guilt. Even as I insist this is not about me, I would be dishonest not to admit that guilt arrives in waves. I am the kind of person who shows up. I have spent nights in bomb shelters before; I have volunteered in past crises. When a nation you love is under attack, distance can feel like dereliction.
No rational explanation fully quiets that voice.
My flight was canceled. I would have added strain. My team is capable. Strategically, I may be more useful abroad.
The arguments are sound. The emotions persist.
But war clarifies something uncomfortable: showing up is not synonymous with boarding a plane. In modern conflict, the battlefield is not confined to geography. It is informational, diplomatic, and psychological. While missiles fall on Israeli cities, narratives are created abroad. While Israeli families race to shelters, antisemitic incidents spike in Diaspora communities. While soldiers defend borders, others must defend legitimacy.
That work does not happen automatically. It requires voices willing to withstand backlash. It requires influencers who refuse to equivocate when moral clarity is demanded. It requires institutions that remain operational rather than reactive. It requires people positioned outside the blast radius who understand that proximity to danger is not the only measure of courage.
The harder truth is this: guilt often signals an identity conflict. “I am the one who goes.” But leadership sometimes demands a different posture: remaining where you are most effective, even when every instinct pulls you toward physical solidarity.
The participants of our Institute — Hen and those sheltering in place — embody one form of courage: presence under fire. Those of us abroad are called to embody another: disciplined advocacy, amplification without distortion, and solidarity without self-centeredness.
Shock is inevitable in moments like these. But awe should not be reserved for weaponry or even endurance alone. It should be reserved for the character revealed under pressure—in Israeli civilians who continue building and speaking between sirens; in Iranian civilians whose longing for dignity and safety mirrors our own; and in diaspora communities that refuse to retreat when hostility surges.
Shock may be unavoidable. Passivity is not. If we cannot all stand beneath the same sky, we can at least stand within the same resolve.
That is what responsibility from afar demands.
Dr. Ron Katz is President of the Tel Aviv Institute and leads international efforts to combat antisemitism. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.