Word: yiddishisms
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This issue of Mosaic includes no undergraduate fiction or poetry, but does contain an essay, "The Relevance of Jane Austen: Remarks on Jewish Writing in America," by Lewis Kampf, and a memoir by the Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer...
...Manhattan's drab Lower East Side, a group of aged journalists made a momentous break with custom. For the first time in its 65 years, the Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish language paper, began printing part of each issue in English. This was no territorial raid on the city's strike-silenced newspaper giants; it was a humble effort by the Forward to stay alive. Said Business Manager Adolph Held, a little sadly: "Now, maybe, our readers will show the Forward to their children...
...children of Forward readers do not read the paper, because they cannot. As the second-generation sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants, they have forgotten the mother tongue, that backward-running curious cross of Hebrew and medieval German. Like Yiddish itself, the Forward is an anachronism, born in a departed past to meet a need that no longer exists...
Today, Forward circulation is down to 56,126 daily and 59,636 Sunday, and still dwindling. The paper has tried to meet its problems by emphasizing its role as a comprehensive general newspaper that just happens to print in Yiddish. It has fulltime correspondents in London, Paris and Israel, subscribes to both the A.P. and U.P.I, as well as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Among its 40 contributing editors and writers-most of whom speak Hebrew. Yiddish and English-are men who write in such specialized fields as theater, labor, TV and society. Socialism has softened into liberalism. The Forward looks...
...scolds incessantly in Yiddish-spiced Brooklynese. It is almost always done gently and with a smile, but the point gets across. "Cy, please, so why is it so schmootzig [dirty] around the soft-drink machine? I told you that should never happen. Cy, do me a favor. Clean...