Yiddish is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet.
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a Yiddish author and playwright who lived in the Russian Empire and in the United States. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants. Pale is an archaic term meaning an enclosed area.
Litvaks or Lita'im are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Over 90% of the population was killed during the Holocaust. The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow an Ashkenazi, non-Hasidic style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Litvaks lived is referred to in Yiddish as ליטעLite, hence the Hebrew term Lita'im.
Belz is a small city in Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine, located near the border with Poland between the Solokiya River and the Richytsia stream. Belz hosts the administration of Belz urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Its population is approximately 2,191.
Isaac Leib Peretz, also sometimes written Yitskhok Leybush Peretz was a Polish Jewish writer and playwright writing in Yiddish. Payson R. Stevens, Charles M. Levine, and Sol Steinmetz count him with Mendele Mokher Seforim and Sholem Aleichem as one of the three great classical Yiddish writers. Sol Liptzin wrote: "Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz was the great awakener of Yiddish-speaking Jewry and Sholom Aleichem its comforter.... Peretz aroused in his readers the will for self-emancipation, the will for resistance against the many humiliations to which they were being subjected."
Nadvirna, also referred to as Nadwirna is a city located in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in western Ukraine. It is the administrative centre of Nadvirna Raion. Nadvirna hosts the administration of Nadvirna urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 22,504.
Berdychiv is a historic city in Zhytomyr Oblast, northern Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Berdychiv Raion within the oblast. It is 44 km (27 mi) south of the administrative center of the oblast, Zhytomyr. Its population is approximately 73,046.
Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature.
Galician Jews or Galitzianers are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating and developed in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary western Ukraine and from south-eastern Poland. Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish.
Benjamin Zuskin was a Soviet and Russian actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre (GOSET). Zuskin had the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR.
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is an American historian, philologist and essayist, noted in particular for his studies of the institution of Cantonism, his critique of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's controversial two volume-work about Jews in Russia, Two Hundred Years Together, as well as translations of Jorge Luis Borges' works into Russian. He is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in History Department at Northwestern University where he teaches Early Modern, Modern and East European Jewish history.
A Yiddish World Remembered is a 2002 Emmy-award-winning documentary by Andrew Goldberg that uses archival photographs, never-before-seen archival videos, and survivor testimony to reconstruct the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, which were destroyed by the Holocaust. Oscar nominated actor Elliott Gould narrates.
A miasteczko (Polish:[mjaˈstɛtʂkɔ] or miestelis, was a historical type of urban settlement similar to a market town in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th-century, these settlements became widespread in the Austrian, German and Russian Empires. The vast majority of miasteczkos had significant or even predominant Jewish populations; these are known in English under the Yiddish term shtetl. Miasteczkos had a special administrative status other than that of town or city.
Mark Markovich Warshawsky (Varshavsky) (Russian: Марк Маркович Варшавский, Yiddish: מאַרק וואַרשאַווסקי; 26 November 1848 – 1907) was a Yiddish-language folk poet and composer.
The expression Eastern European Jewry has two meanings. Its first meaning refers to the current political spheres of the Eastern European countries and its second meaning refers to the Jewish communities in Russia and Poland. The phrase 'Eastern European Jews' or 'Jews of the East' was established during the 20th century in the German Empire and in the western provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, aiming to distinguish the integrating Jews in Central Europe from those Jews who lived in the East. This feature deals with the second meaning of the concept of Eastern European Jewry—the Jewish groups that lived in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary and modern-day Moldova in collective settlement, many of whom spoke Yiddish.
Jacob Dinezon, also known as Yankev Dinezon, was a Yiddish author and editor from Lithuania. There are various spellings of Dinezon's name in both Yiddish and English transliteration. Early in his career, Yiddish publications spelled his name דינעזאהן (Dinezohn). Later publications removed the ה and spelled his name דינעזאן or דינעזאָן (Dinezon). In English, his name has been spelled Dienesohn, Dinesen, Dineson, Dinezon, Dinesohn, Dineszohn, Dinezohn, Dynesohn, and Dynezon.
Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke is a fictional shtetl introduced by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews", who met their misfortunes with humor and the ultimate belief in justice. It has become an archetype shtetl. Other famous imaginary places of Sholem Aleichem are Yehupetz and Boiberik.
Yehupetz is a semifictional city in the Russian Empire, a portrayal of Kyiv (Ukraine) in Sholem Aleichem stories. It can be viewed as a transitional place between the classical shtetl and a modern city.
Hryts’ko Kernerenko was a Jewish-Ukrainian poet. He may have been the first poet of Jewish descent to write in Ukrainian, and was the first to write on the topic of Jewish-Ukrainian identity.
