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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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US House Committee Announces K-12 Antisemitism Investigations in Democrat Strongholds
People take part in anti-Israel protest in Fairfax County, Virginia, US, Nov. 24, 2023. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Monday disclosed a triad of K-12 antisemitism investigations at school districts in California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Among the cases, Virginia’s stands out for being based in the heavily progressive stronghold of Fairfax County, which former US Vice President Kamala Harris (D) carried by 35 points in 2024 and Abigail Spanberger, the Commonwealth’s new Democratic governor-elect, won by a similar margin in this year’s gubernatorial race. According to the House committee’s chairman, the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) district spills over with antisemitic incidents.
“FCPS experienced significant antisemitic incidents even prior to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel. Jewish students allegedly faced repeated antisemitic bullying, including other students making the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute and throwing coins at them,” US Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said in a letter to the district. “Another school for years allegedly refused to remove a hallway display that included painted tiles, 40 percent of which featured swastikas and Nazi flags.”
He added, “Just prior to the Oct. 7 attacks, one high school’s Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) hosted a speaker who had made grotesque antisemitic statements. For example, he had tweeted, ‘I’m not racist I love everyone. Except the yahood [Jews],’ and ‘Never met a Jew who didn’t have a huge nose.’”
Across the country, in California, which has not allotted its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, the Berkeley Unified School District, an array of alleged antisemitic incidents included students chanting “Kill the Jews” to protest Israel and a teacher displaying an image of the Star of David being pummeled by a fist in the classroom.
“In another concerning incident, at Malcolm X Elementary School, a second-grade teacher told her students to write ‘messages of anti-hate’ for display,” Walberg continued in another missive to BUSD’s superintendent. “Several students followed the teacher’s lead and wrote ‘stop bombing babies.’ However, rather than displaying the message in the hall outside of her classroom, the teacher allegedly placed them outside of the classroom of the school’s sole Jewish teacher.”
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), based in a city which has awarded the Democratic Party no less than 77 percent of its voters in presidential contests since 1996, is also seeing troubling trends, according to Walberg, a Republican.
“Today, SDP employs numerous educators who allegedly promote antisemitic content in their classrooms,” the chairman explained in his letter to the district. “One such teacher has allegedly threatened Jewish parents and students alone. She and other Philadelphia educators also allegedly use lessons from an effort called Teaching Palestine, whose class materials rationalize terrorist violence and advocate for the destruction of Israel.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
The problem has led to civil rights complaints and lawsuits.
In September 2023, for example, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
As The Algemeiner has reported previously, the North American Values Institute (NAVI) also raised alarms about rising antisemitism when the Wissahickon School District (WSD) in Ambler, Pennsylvania presented as fact an anti-Zionist account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its K-12 students by using it as the basis for courses taken by honors students.
The material, provided by virtual learning platform Edgenuity, implied that Israel is a settler-colonial state — a false assertion promoted by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups — while referring to the founding of Israel as the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists. Based on documents shared with The Algemeiner, the material does not seemingly detail the varied reasons for Palestinian Arabs leaving the nascent State of Israel at the time, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. Nor does it appear to explain that some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
“College campus antisemitism has gotten a lot of attention because we see the effects, the protests, the barricades, and encampments,” Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of End Jew Hatred and The Lawfare Project, told The Algemeiner in September during an interview. “In K-12, it’s not as flagrant. It’s educational material that’s talked about in the classroom and which parents may not be aware of unless they talk with their children about what’s happening in school. So, this has essentially been a secret issue because the American people are not aware of what children are learning in schools or how schools have been handling antisemitism in school.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Miss Universe Israel’s Team Reveals National Costume Was Stolen Before Debut at 2025 Pageant in Bangkok
Melanie Shiraz of Israel takes part in the National Costume show during the 74th Miss Universe pageant in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Miss Israel Melanie Shiraz had her national costume stolen shortly before she was set to debut the look in the Miss Universe 2025 pageant, her team revealed on Tuesday.
The Miss Universe competition concluded in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 21 with Fátima Bosch from Mexico being crowned Miss Universe from a group of contestants representing more than 130 nations around the world. The first runner-up was Thailand’s Praveenar Singh followed by Venezuela’s Stephany Abasali as second runner-up.
Shiraz, 27, had designed the outfit she was set to wear for the national costume segment of the Miss Universe competition. Edgar Saakyan, national director of Miss Universe Israel, said in a released statement on Tuesday that a day and a half before Shiraz was set to take the stage in the national costume portion of the competition, the Miss Israel team was “misled by the costume constructor’s team, and the national costume was stolen.”
“A representative of the costume constructor arrived at the Bangkok airport under the pretext of ‘clarifying details,’ approached a member of our team, took the costume, and then stopped all communication – effectively stealing it and placing us in an extremely difficult position,” Saakyan explained. “We regard this as a deliberate act of harm, including damage to our intellectual property and reputation … This matter has been transferred to our legal team.”
Saakyan added that ultimately, a team of Thai costume makers made Shiraz a new look, based on her original concept, with only 10 hours left before the national costume segment of the Miss Universe contest. The costume was completed with “incredible support” from the Miss Universe and Miss Grand International teams, he said.
“This display of professionalism, grace under pressure, and human solidarity allowed us not only to take the stage – but to do so with honor, pride, and respect for the flag,” Saakyan noted. “We are grateful beyond words.”
Shiraz ended up wearing in the national costume segment a yellow floor length gown that also featured a yellow ribbon in honor of the murdered hostages still held in captivity and the former hostages who have returned home after being abducted by Hamas-led terrorists during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A crystal Star of David was displayed on her dress, and its train was adorned with red anemones, which is Israel’s national flower and also commonly found in southern Israel where the Oct. 7 attack took place. Shiraz paired the dress with a shawl and head covering. The costume was titled “The Light of Hope.”
“While many national costumes are joyful and celebratory, this year’s theme of peace, combined with all that our people have endured over the past two years, called for a more somber presence on stage,” Shiraz said in an Instagram post. “One that carries both remembrance and the hope for a more peaceful future. I designed this piece to honor our story, our grief, and the light we continue to hold onto. I couldn’t be more proud [sic] to wear it.”
Saakyan announced in his statement on Tuesday that next year, Shiraz will be the official national costume designer for Miss Israel. “We are confined this partnership will deliver not just visual beauty, but a meaningful cultural message to the world,” he said.
Miss Palestine Nadine Ayoub sparked controversy when she took the stage during the national costume segment of the Miss Universe competition wearing a robe that depicted the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, alongside olive branches. Earlier in the competition, Ayoub uploaded a series of posts on social media that included lies about the Israel-Hamas war, such as one that inflated the number of Palestinian casualties and another that described Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the Israeli children murdered in Hamas captivity, as Palestinian victims of the war instead of victims of Hamas terrorism. Ayoub was the first-ever “Miss Palestine” contestant in the Miss Universe pageant.
After the New York Post revealed that Ayoub was married to the son of notorious Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti and even named a child after him, Shiraz called on Miss Universe organizers to strip Miss Palestine of her place in the top 30. “Miss Universe should not condone fraud, violations of its code of conduct and especially terror. I expect them to take corrective action,” Shiraz told the Post on Saturday. “I don’t need to act as the moral CEO of Miss Universe – they should be able to do that themselves.”
“It makes my skin crawl thinking we were in the same room so many times,” added Shiraz. “It’s shocking that we all shared a stage with someone with serious terror ties.”
Following the Miss Universe 2025 competition, Brigitta Schaback renounced her title of Miss Universe Estonia and Olivia Yacé, the pageant’s fourth runner-up, renounced her title as Miss Universe Africa and Oceania.
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New York City Mayor Adams Announces New $3 Million Holocaust Memorial
New York City Mayor Eric Adams meeting with Israelis during a reception in Jerusalem that was organized by the Combat Antisemitism Movement. Photo: Combat Antisemitism Movement’s X account
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday the planned creation of a $3 million Holocaust memorial to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II as well as the survivors who rebuilt their lives in New York City.
The “Queens Holocaust Memorial” will be located on the grounds of the Queens Borough Hall and include artwork as well as a commemorative garden. The process of selecting an artist for the memorial will be led by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ “Percent for Art“ program in discussion with artists, historians, and Holocaust survivors.
The Queens Jewish Community Council, in partnership with local civic and faith leaders, originally proposed the idea for the memorial. The city and Office of Queens Borough President Donovan Richard Jr. allocated $3 million to support the development of the project, but the Queens Jewish Community Council will help raise additional funds to support the memorial’s design and construction.
A total of 14,700 Holocaust survivors live in New York, which is 50 percent of all survivors in the US, according to the UJA Federation New York. The new memorial will be the first major tribute to the Holocaust in the borough of Queens, which is where many Holocaust survivors settled when they moved to New York after World War II. The site will serve as a hosting ground for Holocaust remembrance ceremonies, educational programs for students, and community gatherings to promote solidarity across communities.
“It is not enough to say, ‘Never again’ — we have to live it with our actions too,” Adams said in a released statement. “By preserving the stories of both victims and survivors, by creating a permanent space for remembrance and reflection, by promoting understanding and solidarity across generations, this memorial will live out the meaning of ‘never again.’ As our city and our country confront the rising tide of antisemitism, our administration will not remain silent. We will use our office to call out hate wherever we find it, encourage compassion wherever we need it, and create a city where everyone can live side by side in harmony.”
Adams announced the creation of the memorial alongside Richard Jr. The latter said the Queens Holocaust Memorial “will not only pay a touching tribute to the six million innocent Jews murdered by the Nazis and the survivors who settled in our borough afterward, but it will also serve as daily inspiration for our fight to forge a future free of antisemitism.”
“No matter how much time passes since the evils of the Holocaust, New York City’s commitment to the pledge of ‘Never Again’ must never waver,” he added. “That is why, in the face of rising tides of heinous antisemitism and Holocaust denial across our society, I could not be prouder to lead this effort alongside the administration and the Queens’ Jewish community in creating this critically important memorial here at Queens Borough Hall.”
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who was elected earlier this month, will take office and replace Adams in January. Adams recently expressed concern for the safety of Jewish communities in New York under Mamdani’s leadership.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have also raised alarm bells about Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election.
During his four years in office, Adams created the first mayor’s office dedicated to combating antisemitism; signed an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism; created the city’s first Jewish Advisory Council; and launched the New York City-Israel Economic Council.