The Head Heeb

Mamaloshen online

Tamar Rotem profiles the tiny Yiddishist movement in Israel and touches on the Yiddish blogosphere.

In addition, [Noam Starik] has also begun to write a blog (Web log) about the topic. Under the moniker "Der Hussid Noam Starik," he brings extracts from the classical literature, or the Yiddishist press, and discusses cultural issues. "I know for certain that I have ultra-Orthodox readers. I want to show them that there is another Yiddish in addition to the everyday language."

Occasionally he is critical of them. In his most recent posting, for example, on the day after a traumatic visit to Mea She'arim on Purim, he was compelled to write. He described the drunken youngsters in the street who made him feel ashamed, and how he happened upon the harassment of an Arab driver. When he intervened, they almost beat him up, he related.

Starik's blog is not the only one in Yiddish. Remarkably, it emerges that Yiddish is flourishing on the Internet. One can find the blog by Ketla Kenya, a Hasid by origin who introduces himself thus: "Here writes an enlightened Hasid who thinks like an enlightened person and is fervent like a Hasid."

And there is also the blog kept by Shalom Berger, a secular Yiddishist who lives in the United States. There are also Internet magazines ("Der Bevebter Yid" - The Jew on the Web) and many sites of Yiddish archives and libraries around the world, like that of the largest library in the world at the University of New Hampshire.

More links to Yiddish sites here, and this blog links to English-language articles about modern Yiddish.