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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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‘Shameful’: California Jewish Advocacy Group Denounces Challenge to K-12 Antisemitism Law
Students from Encinal High School and St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, participating in anti-Israel demonstration on Jan 26. 2024: Photo: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A California state legislator has introduced a bill aimed at gutting a recently passed K-12 antisemitism law (AB 715), which strengthened civil rights protections for Jewish students amid a pandemic of bullying, harassment, and extreme anti-Zionist activity in public schools.
Robert Garcia, a Democrat and member of the California State Assembly, introduced the measure — Assembly Bill (AB) 2159 — on Wednesday, and it has already amassed support from a number of groups which have opposed the Jewish community’s efforts to address antisemitism in education.
In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law which requires the state to establish a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools at a time of rising anti-Jewish hatred across the US. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the bill confronted Newsom, a Democrat rumored to be interested in running for US president in 2028, with a politically fraught decision, as it aims to limit the extent to which the state’s ideologically charged ethnic studies curricula, supported by progressives and many Democrats, may plant anti-Zionist viewpoints into the minds of the 5.8 million students educated in its public schools.
Newsom, who has since endorsed the false charge that Israel is an “apartheid” state, approved the measure amid these cross currents, paving the way for state officials to proceed with establishing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially barring antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.
“Specifically, this bill removes reference to a definition of antisemitism that could include criticism of Israeli government policy, requires the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to be selected through an unbiased, merit-based civil service process, and removes vague and subjective language that exposes schools and teachers to discrimination complaints,” Garcia’s new bill says.
Garcia is a former trustee of the Etiwanda School District, located in the southern region of state, which has already been the subject of a civil rights complaint alleging harrowing incidents of “vicious antisemitism” in which a 12-year-old Jewish girl was flogged with a stick, told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Adolf Hitler. During the period of the alleged abuse the girl’s bullies stated that it would not have occurred were she non-Jewish. According to the complaint, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in March 2025, the school district never punished her tormenters despite receiving a torrent of complaints.
“It is shameful that Assemblymember Garcia not only introduced a bill that would harm Jewish students, but ‘worked closely’ on it with organizations that have promoted or enabled antisemitism,” StandWithUs, a California-based Jewish advocacy group, said in a statement denouncing the measure.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the California Faculty Association, and the California Labor Federation were among the groups specifically called out by StandWithUs.
“All legislators should reject efforts by these groups to influence policy on the state of California,” StandWithUs continued. “The assemblymember should apologize and withdraw AB 2159, which is a transparent ploy to prevent extremists from being held accountable for spreading hate in K-12 schools.”
Garcia is not alone in attempting to effectively overturn the K-12 antisemitism law. California Middle school teacher Andrea Prichett, joined by the Los Angeles Educators for Palestine group, challenged it in a lawsuit last year, arguing that it violates the First Amendment, was “hastily written,” and “singled out” anti-Zionist viewpoints for punishment. A federal judge, Noël Wise, appointed by former US President Joe Biden, struck down the complaint, noting that teachers working as government employees do not enjoy unfettered free speech. In her ruling, Wise stated that while teachers may comment on matters of public interest, previous jurisprudence prohibits their uttering statements which obstruct government’s “legitimate interests.”
She continued, “As public school education belongs to the government, the government may regulate Teacher Plaintiffs [sic] speech to accord with the government’s education goals. It is of no significance that the curricula and the attendant speech required to teach it may advance a single viewpoint to the exclusion of another.”
Another lawsuit was filed in November by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose national legal director, Jenin Younes, has said on social media that Jews “fake…hate crimes” and endorsed claims that “Zionists” control the media and played a role in assassinating former US President John F. Kennedy.
“It’s dawning on me recently how insane it is I just accept that I’m subservient to them,” Younes wrote.
In a statement announcing its lawsuit, the ADC argued that Arabs are victims of discrimination and said that the California law amounts to a hijacking of American policy by Israel, an argument advanced by neo-Nazis, including Nicholas Fuentes, and commentators who promote their views such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — both of whom claim that proliferating antisemitism is an exercise of free speech.
In Wednesday’s statement, StandWithUs said that if the latest assault on AB 715 succeeds it would “harm the Jewish community and public trust in California’s education system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US CENTCOM Chief Says Iran Attacking Civilian Sites as Regime Grows Increasingly Desperate
US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to Iran International’s Samira Gharaei, March 22, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
Iran has increasingly targeted civilian sites across the Middle East out of “desperation” as the regime’s internal cohesion and military capabilities crumble amid intensifying pressure from the US-Israeli campaign, according to the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM).
In his first one-on-one interview since the outbreak of war with Iran late last month, Admiral Brad Cooper told Iran International on Sunday that, “in the last couple weeks,” Tehran has carried out more than 300 strikes on civilian, non-military sites, describing the pattern as a shift driven by battlefield setbacks.
“They’re operating in a sign of desperation” Cooper said, arguing that Iran’s ability to sustain large-scale offensive operations has diminished under sustained US and Israeli strikes. Cooper added that Tehran’s rapidly degrading military capabilities have pushed the regime to begin targeting civilian infrastructure and residential communities.
US and Israeli officials have said the initial days of the conflict, which began on Feb. 28, were marked by coordinated barrages of drones and missiles. Those Iranian attacks, however, have now given way to smaller, less intense launches, a change they attribute to deteriorating Iranian capabilities.
“At the beginning of the conflict, you saw large volumes in the dozens of drones and missiles. You no longer see that. It’s all one or two at a time,” Cooper said.
Iran, however, has vowed to continue its military operations against Israel and the US, while also targeting Gulf countries.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing over the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping route through which about a fifth of the world’s oil flows. According to Cooper, the waterway remains technically open but commercial traffic has dropped sharply as vessels avoid the area due to Iranian drone and missile activity.
“The Strait of Hormuz is physically open to transit,” he said. “The reason ships are not transiting right now is because the Islamic Republic is shooting at them with drones and missiles.”
The United States and its allies have stepped up efforts to secure the corridor, part of what Cooper described as the “largest umbrella of air defense in the Middle East history.”
The conflict has also raised fears of broader escalation. US officials had previously warned that additional strikes could target key Iranian infrastructure, while Tehran has threatened retaliation against regional energy and water facilities.
However, US President Donald Trump stated on Truth Social Monday that he and Iranian leaders had “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.” Trump added that due to the purported success of the meetings, he has “INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD.”
Iranian officials declined any dialogue with Trump, claiming that the president had “retreated” from his military posture “out of fear of Iran’s response.”
The statement came after Trump threatened on Saturday to “obliterate” the country’s energy infrastructure if the regime did not agree to an ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. Iran said it would retaliate to such an attack by targeting critical infrastructure across the Middle East.
Some analysts have speculated that Trump’s apparent shift in tone was a way to buy time to make preparations for the next US military moves.
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UK Art Exhibit Condemned for Displaying Drawings With Antisemitic Tropes ‘Worse Than Nazi Propaganda’
Demonstrators hold Israeli and British flags outside the Law Courts, during a march against antisemitism, after an increase in the UK, during a temporary truce between the Palestinian Islamist terrorists Hamas and Israel, in London, Britain, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Susannah Ireland
An art exhibition that opened this weekend in Margate, a seaside town in England, features nearly 100 drawings that promote antisemitic tropes, feature swastikas, target Jewish or Israeli individuals, and deny violence that took place during the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Drawings Against Genocide” at the Joseph Wales Studios will be open until March 29 and is organized by the groups Art for a Free Palestine and Thanet for Palestine. The artist behind the drawings is Matthew Collings, a 70-year-old writer and former art critic who has been openly critical of Israel. There are roughly 100 drawings in the exhibit critical of Israel, Jews, the “Israeli lobby,” and more, according to Art for a Free Palestine.
One drawing in the exhibit shows members of a so-called Israel lobby that is “nuts and utterly in control,” while other drawings accuse Israel of apartheid and committing a genocide against Palestinians. Several drawings feature a Nazi swastika, often alongside the flag of Israel, while one artwork in particular depicts ancient Israelites with horns. A separate piece shows two Sotheby’s auctioneers eating babies with blood dripping from their teeth and one of them is Sotheby’s French-Israeli owner Patrick Drahi. The drawing claims he is a “fanatic Zionist” who eats babies alive.
Another picture targeting an individual – the owner of @Sothebys – suggesting he eats babies alive. This sickening and medieval antisemitic hate is ok according to Kent police. pic.twitter.com/JpgiseKisD
— Stop The Hate UK (@StopTheHate_UK) March 22, 2026
Another drawing in the exhibit shows an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier spewing blood from their mouth and hands, while another shows an IDF soldier standing over a pool of blood and a human skull. A separate drawing denies that sexual violence took place during the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, while another falsely claims there is “no reliable evidence whatsoever” about some of the violence that took place during the massacre.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted naked in one drawing while spewing blood from his mouth and the piece suggests that he is trying to “change reality” with hypnotism in his desire to “invade Iran.” Other drawings target the chief executive of the Jewish organization Community Security Trust, pro-Israel writer and journalist David Collier, and even film director Quentin Tarantino, who lives in Israel with his family.
“This is the recycling of classic antisemitic tropes dressed up as activism,” Collier told The Algemeiner. “When swastikas and dehumanizing imagery are normalized in an art gallery, it tells you something has gone badly wrong.”
“I am currently looking out at a UK landscape in which Jewish people are murdered while going to pray on Yom Kippur, and ambulances owned by a Jewish charity are torched,” he added. “If the government and the police do not start connecting the dots between antisemitism masquerading as pro-Palestinian activism and the real-world violence we see unfolding before us, then the situation for British Jews will only get worse.”
The Combat Antisemitism Movement said the drawings are “worse than Nazi propaganda” and feature “monstrous blood libels.” The grassroots nonprofit organization Stop the Hate UK said the drawings display the artist’s “obsessive hatred of Jews” that is “dressed up as art.”
“The artist makes sure to include lots of bank notes and blood. All the old tropes,” the group noted in a post on X. “The British Jewish community are fed up of being told this sickening hate is ok. It’s not.” Stop the Hate UK also shared on X a video of the exhibit’s alleged curator saying “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” a slogan that calls for the dismantling of the State of Israel and for it to be replaced by “Palestine.”
The exhibit has also been publicly condemned by the UK’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp and several other groups, including the Jewish Leadership Council, Labour Against Antisemitism, and Campaign Against Antisemitism in statements given to The Telegraph. The exhibit was reported to local police, but they have taken no action, and it remains open.
The Thanet district council, led by the Labour Party, was criticized for promoting the exhibition after its tourism website, Visit Thanet, provided information about its dates and venue, but the webpage has since been deleted.
Collings said in an Instagram post that the drawings are “directed against the horrific genocide against the Palestinians being perpetrated by Israel.”
Art for a Free Palestine said the exhibit “is about raising consciousness and welcoming people to learn about the UK government’s connections to the Israeli lobby and its continued manufacturing of precision weapons on UK soil that are used to target and murder civilians in Gaza.” The drawings, the group added, “teach us the way in which our politicians and mainstream media use propaganda to lie and manipulate the general public in order to cover up the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians.”