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We are applying for Romanian citizenship by descent

There is little to no information about the details for applying for Romanian citizenship by descent. I am writing this to help others out with the nitty gritty details. I am updating this through the process. We’ll see if I’m successful. Our situationWe are US citizens. My wife has a grandmother Livia who was born […]

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Jewish Culture

The Lost History of the Yiddish Typewriter

I am fascinated with the Yiddish typewriter. Finding a Yiddish typewriter is a bit like finding a whale at sea: though not exceedingly rare, you still write home about it. There is very little information on the Yiddish typewriter online as I write this. No Wikipedia article, no anything really, so I figure I will do […]

Categories
Letters

Letters from the Old Country: Concentration Camp 1942

This week, I translated these postcards (in German) for a client. They come from a concentration camp in France in 1942. The newly interned author writes desperately to family to send him supplies. Doing research on this Camp de Rivesaltes, this first postcard was written a day after Jews in southern France were collected there. […]

Categories
Jewish Genealogy

How to spell Yiddish names

I was recently contacted asking for help with the spelling of a name for the purposes of a headstone in Hebrew letters. The name was Necha. Here was my response: “You’re going to have two options: נעכע or נעכא. You can see proof of this on the following two headstones: Headstone 1 with נעכע Headstone 2 with […]

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Jewish Language & Translation

Not in the dictionary: Yiddish words and abbreviations

This page is an appeal to expand the most comprehensive Yiddish-English dictionary to date by Beinfeld/Bochner/Niborski/Vaisbrot. As a Yiddish translator, I find words, variant definitions of existing words, and many abbreviations that are simply not in the dictionary. I have started compiling a list, which I would gladly see incorporated in the dictionary’s second edition. […]

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The Four Questions in Yiddish (Passover)

In talking with others about the Four Questions, I realized that there are several versions of this Passover song in Yiddish. This inquiry started with the word “ongeshpart” (leaning), which I had heard from this song, while others had heard “ongeleynt.” I have bolded this distinction in how to say “either sitting or leaning” below […]

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Jewish Language & Translation

Various Yiddish Types: Judeo-German

This past week, a client asked me to translate a Yiddish journal written in Hungary from the 1840s. The journal turned out not to be written in Yiddish, but in German in Hebrew characters. Moses Mendelssohn was famous for doing this in the late 1700s with his German Bible translation in Hebrew letters. In the […]

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Jewish Language & Translation

How Yankel got his shtetl liquor license

Booze and Jews! Rags to riches! War! What else could you ask for in a story?   This story comes via a translation I just finished for a client. They had a copy of this newspaper article in the family, but lost it. They found it again recently online through a digitized database of Yiddish […]

Categories
Jewish Culture

Things you thought were Jewish

Latkes, groggers, and braided challah, what could be more Jewish than that? Get ready to have your mind blown. Latkes When I was an exchange student in Germany living with a host family, I was honestly shocked to have latkes served to me one day for dinner. Not only was I served latkes, but they were […]

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