Uncategorized
VIDEO: Social media activist asks Jerusalem passers-by why Yiddish is important
Yirmiyahu Danzig (aka @that_semite on Instagram and @Unpacked on YouTube), an Israeli Jewish rights and anti-racism activist of Caribbean and Ashkenazi descent, usually explores questions of identity on his Instagram account in English, Hebrew and Arabic. But last week, he posted a video where he speaks to Orthodox passers-by on the streets of Jerusalem — in Yiddish.
Although the official language of Israel is Hebrew, many Hasidic Jews in Israel speak Yiddish regularly.
Danzig, a digital educator for Unpacked, wrote me in an email that his work as an educator and activist is focused on dialogue. Until now his goal has been to try to bridge divides between Israelis and Palestinians through language, culture and empathy.
But in 2020, as tensions between Haredi and non-Haredi Israelis kept mounting over issues like the military draft, Danzig saw the same need for dialogue between those two groups as he did for Israelis and Palestinians — using language, culture and history to humanize, understand and imagine a shared future.
But he knew that he couldn’t access that world without knowing any Yiddish. So he decided to learn it, and did so on his own, using Yiddish language textbooks. He also took a few lessons, one-on-one, to practice speaking the language. “I’ve always found that speaking to people is the best way to internalize a language.”
Now that he’s fluent, Danzig created a video in the Haredi Jerusalem neighborhoods of Mea Shearim and Geulah in which he approaches people on the street with a microphone, asking them if they speak Yiddish.
In the clip, he begins by asking passers-by an easy question: “What’s your favorite Yiddish word?” — eliciting unsurprising responses like lekhayaim and zolst zayn gezunt un shtark, may you be healthy and strong. But the conversations get more interesting once he starts asking people why it matters to speak Yiddish in Israel.
Although there are no women in the clip, Danzig said it wasn’t intentional. “It was difficult to find Haredi women comfortable appearing on camera with a man,” he said. “But I remain committed to including more female Haredi voices, as I do across my work in Israeli and Palestinian society,” he said.
Danzig was raised in San Diego, with a father from Israel and a mother from Guyana. He was surrounded with Hebrew, Mizrahi music, reggae, hummus, falafel and plantains.
His father’s family traces back generations in Jerusalem’s Old Yishuv, the name used for the Jewish community in Palestine before the arrival of the modern Zionist movement. “My grandfather spoke Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic and Palestinian Yiddish,” he said. “I watched him move seamlessly between Jewish and Arab worlds in Jerusalem and Jaffa. He passed on to me his love for Hebrew and Arabic.”
Although Yiddish wasn’t part of his upbringing, Danzig expressed pride that he was a descendant of the Perushim — the students of the great 18th century Lithuanian rabbi, the Vilna Gaon, many of whom settled in in the Old Yishuv in the early 1800s and married local and Iraqi Jewish women.
In fact, the Yiddish dialect spoken in Jerusalem today, called yerushalmi yidish, is very similar to Lithuanian Yiddish — evidence of the deep linguistic influence that the Vilna Gaon’s students had on the language in Israel’s holiest city.
The post VIDEO: Social media activist asks Jerusalem passers-by why Yiddish is important appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
Uncategorized
Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
Uncategorized
Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.