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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 Allies Rebuff Trump’s Request for Support in Strait of Hormuz
A coastguard boat approaches an Indian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier, Shivalik, as it arrives at Mundra Port via the Strait of Hormuz, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Gujarat, India, March 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amit Dave
Several US allies said on Monday they had no immediate plans to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, rebuffing a request by President Donald Trump for military support to keep the vital waterway open.
Trump called on nations to help police the strait after Iran responded to US-Israeli attacks by using drones, missiles, and mines to effectively close the channel for tankers that normally transport a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas.
Germany, Spain, and Italy were among allies that ruled out participating in any mission in the Gulf, at least for now. Other countries were more circumspect, with Britain and Denmark saying they would consider ways they might help, but emphasizing a need to de-escalate and avoid getting dragged into the war.
“What does … Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in Berlin on Monday, as he downplayed threats by Trump that failing to come to Washington’s aid could have consequences for the NATO alliance.
“This is not our war; we have not started it,” he added.
The conflict has nothing to do with NATO and Germany has no plans to be drawn into it, German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said.
“Neither the United States nor Israel consulted us before the war, and … Washington explicitly stated at the outset of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired,” the spokesperson said.
Spain said it would not do anything that could escalate the conflict, while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said sending military ships to a war zone would be interpreted as joining the conflict.
“Italy is not at war with anyone and sending military ships in a war zone would mean entering the war,” Salvini told reporters in Milan.
NATO countries, several of whom have been at the sharp end of criticism from Trump in recent months, are wary of angering the White House, and some signaled willingness to help find a solution, even if plans remain vague for now.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was in talks with the United Nations about replicating a deal that had been used to allow grain to be exported out of Ukraine during its war with Russia.
EU DISCUSSING MANDATE OF RED SEA MISSION
The EU is also discussing whether it could change the mandate of its Middle East naval mission, Aspides, which currently protects ships in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, to include the Strait of Hormuz, Kallas said.
But Greece, which leads the Aspides mission, will limit its participation in the Middle East to the Red Sea, said government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose reluctance to help the initial US attacks drew sharp criticism from Trump, said Britain would work with allies on a collective plan to secure freedom of navigation through the strait.
But he said this would not be easy, and he reiterated that the UK would not be drawn into a wider war. Britain has autonomous mine-hunting systems that could be used, Starmer said.
Denmark, traditionally one of the most enthusiastic NATO allies but which has clashed with Trump over his demands that it cede Greenland, said the EU should consider helping reopen the strait even if it didn’t agree with the war.
“Even if we don’t like what’s going on, I think it’s wise to keep an open mind on whether Europe … in some way can contribute, but with a view towards de-escalation,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen said that were NATO to agree any mission in the Gulf it would take time to draw up a framework.
“These are weighty decisions, and any action must be both feasible and impactful. At this moment, no decision is on the table,” Berendsen said on Monday in Brussels.
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Two Brothers Placed Under Investigation in France for Planning Antisemitic Attack
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Two young men have been placed under formal investigation in France for planning a “deadly and antisemitic“ attack, the counterterrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said in a statement on Sunday.
The suspects, a 22-year-old engineering student and an unemployed 20-year-old who are brothers, were arrested last Tuesday after police found a semi-automatic firearm, a bottle of acid and an ISIS flag in their car during a roadside police stop near a prison in northern France, PNAT said. It gave no details about the nature of the planned attack or its target.
The two are being investigated on charges of criminal terrorist conspiracy and possessing a weapon in connection with a terrorist undertaking, and have been placed in pre-trial detention. The PNAT did not release the suspects’ full identities.
Concerns about possible attacks against Jewish communities around the world have risen following US and Israeli attacks on Iran and a subsequent response from Tehran.
A gunman crashed his truck into a Detroit-area synagogue on Thursday, while in Europe an explosion caused minor damage to a Jewish school in Amsterdam on Saturday and another explosion caused a fire at a synagogue in Belgium on Monday.
The French interior ministry reinforced security around Jewish places of worship in early March.
The French authorities said jihadist propaganda was found on the suspects’ digital devices and one of the brothers had filmed a video pledging allegiance to ISIS.
Governments and human rights advocates have noted a rise in antisemitism since the 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s war on Gaza.
France‘s human rights commission, the CNCDH, has said antisemitic acts in France tend to increase after Israeli army operations in Palestinian territories. Antisemitic acts surged to a record high after the 2023 Hamas attack, but fell 16% in 2025 compared with the year before. However, they remained well above pre-2023 levels.
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This initiative is helping Israeli war survivors heal through art – and is making therapy cool
Tomer Peretz opened the door to his unassuming gallery in Chelsea, draped in a studded black shawl and sporting cartoonishly large – but very cool – sneakers. It was the day after the biggest snowstorm in recent NYC history, and the shoes were, of course, the most practical option for an LA-based Israeli with limited snow experience.
The 8 Project gallery opened in New York this winter, but it is only one piece of a larger initiative. The program, founded by Peretz, brings Oct. 7 survivors, bereaved siblings, Israeli soldiers coping with PTSD, and others affected by the war to Los Angeles for a two-month therapeutic art residency. Participants spend hours each day creating art while also undergoing therapy and mentorship. Now, Peretz has brought the residency program and its accompanying art gallery, which is open only for private events, to New York City.
Upon entering the 8 Project gallery in downtown Manhattan, the first painting one is greeted with is Peretz’s own, a group of Israeli soldiers huddled together, accompanied by the spirits of their fallen comrades represented by icy-white hands painted on the heads of the living. In a city where torn-down hostage posters became almost a fixture of the streets during the Gaza war, the gallery feels both out of place and deeply intentional.
Peretz receives applicants for his therapeutic residency program through rehabilitation hospitals in Israel and via social media. The only real requirement, he says, is a passion for art.
“They don’t have to have technical skills,” he told me. “Art is our toolbox to get through their soul. If they can sit every day and create, they’re already qualified.”
Peretz flies incoming residents to Los Angeles and covers their living expenses so they can focus entirely on healing.
Peretz was a volunteer with ZAKA, the Israeli humanitarian organization that specializes in recovering human remains after terror attacks. In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, he helped identify bodies at the sites of the attacks.
Once he returned to his home in LA, where he had been working as a painter for years, he found he could no longer approach his work in the same way. “I realized that everything I had been doing in my life had no real purpose,” he said. “We artists, we think we are so important. But if the work doesn’t do something, it’s just fucking art.”
He began working with artists informally and gradually developed what would become the 8 Project Residency. “I couldn’t create anything besides creating with people who were affected by the war. I cared about nothing else.”
Part of the appeal for residents, he says, is the cool-factor of the program. “People get attracted to cool, fun people.” Unlike traditional therapy — “a boring therapist and psychiatrist in a room,” as he put it — the program offers something different. “We literally brought something completely new, as far as therapy and healing, that is really, really fun.”
Shaked Salton, a former 8 Project resident whose best friend was killed on Oct. 7 and who served as a sergeant in the IDF’s search and rescue unit, told me on Zoom from her new home in LA that she struggled to find motivation after the war. The residency program helped her to find it. “Every day, I needed to wake up in the morning. For someone who’s been through a war, it can be tough.” But in the program, “there is no way you’re not coming to the studio.”
Now, she told me, she’s more connected to her feelings. “I paint better,” she told me. “I came to think more creatively. My brain was blocked.”
Sahar Haba, another former resident who now works as a mentor for the project, also serves as the self-ordained de facto DJ at the gallery. As residents worked on their art in the gallery’s back room, Haba played everything from Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” to techno and Israeli Mizrahi music.
Haba served 15 years in the IDF and experienced the death of several of his friends on Oct. 7 and during the war, including American Hersh Goldberg Polin, whom he met through their shared love for the Israeli soccer team, Hapoel Jerusalem. He adores fashion, evidenced not only by the sneakers and jerseys he designed, displayed throughout the gallery, but also by his decidedly funky graphic socks.
During his residency, Peretz encouraged him to lead art workshops.
“Most of the time, the healing process is like, ‘Let’s talk about you, what do you need?’” Haba said. “Here I had the chance to do it the opposite way — to be the guide.”
Haba led art workshops for Nova survivors, soldiers, families and couples who were affected by the war.
One of the most striking paintings at the 8 Project Gallery is a portrait Peretz painted of Andrei Kozlov, a freed hostage and former 8 Project resident. In the piece, half of Kozlov’s face is incomplete, streaked with black and red contours that suggest the rest of his features.
The painting hung across from where I was conducting interviews that afternoon, so his face had been staring back at me from the gallery wall for much of the day. Unexpectedly, the real Kozlov walked in and introduced himself to me — before joking that I must be interviewing Peretz for a clerk position.
Kozlov became an 8 Project resident a mere five months after he was freed from captivity in Gaza. Now, he lives in New York and spends hours a day working on his art.
Haba showed me a pair of boots he had designed during the war, covered in a collage of hostage posters and featuring a QR code linking to the Bring Them Home website on the tongue of the shoe. He showed his creation to Kozlov, joking that the QR code no longer worked before pulling him into a bear hug.
In the center of the gallery stands a giant tree that Peretz explained was sculpted out of the body bags ZAKA used to collect human remains. References to ZAKA appear throughout the exhibit. In a small side room, a video created by one of the residents is played, which shows ZAKA volunteers sitting in the ruins of the kibbutzim in Israel that were ravaged by the Oct. 7 attacks. The volunteers were instructed to sit in silence for an hour and stare into the camera, resulting in a deeply unsettling film that felt almost too intimate to watch.
Peretz has a self-professed “radical” perspective on healing. “I do not like when therapists or psychiatrists like to dig too much about the past,” he said. “I’m all about shaking the hand of the devil that was with you that day. But once you shake the devil’s hand, OK, let’s move on.”
That’s why the second half of the program is dedicated to helping residents plan for their future. “It’s all about how do we become hungry to wake up tomorrow morning?” said Peretz. “So if I’m going to speak about the past all day, I will not be hungry to wake up tomorrow.”
That concept is where the 8 Project got its name from. “God created the world in 6 days,” said Peretz. “On the 7th day, we got some rest, and on the 8th day, we started to live.” After residents leave the program, Peretz hopes that they, too, can start to live.
Peretz has remained in touch with all of his past residents. “Some of them are going to school. Some of them are building relationships. Some of them are building a career.” He said all have continued to pursue their passion for art.
The gallery is open for private events, and while staff say they have had several people walk into the gallery who are not connected to Judaism or the war in any way, they are not Peretz’s target audience.
“I like that we’re not open for the public, I don’t think we are for the public.” He explained, “I’m not interested to tell my story at all. I don’t want to tell the Jewish story. I’m not trying to get more fans for the Jewish people through this exhibit.”
“I’m not for everyone,” he added. I care only about my brothers and sisters who created this, and the next people who are gonna create more, and that’s it.”
Still, Peretz believes the project’s presence in New York matters.
“New York needs this more than any other city. I realized that the Jewish people in New York are so traumatized, and they need that connection so badly,” he said. “A lot of us, Jewish people in the diaspora, got lost. We need that connection. We want to get the hug.”
The post This initiative is helping Israeli war survivors heal through art – and is making therapy cool appeared first on The Forward.