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From the archives

The F-Word

How politics and language mix

In the Human Frame

Memories of the baffled king

Balance the Books

The case for Canadian publishing

Michael Wex

Michael Wex is the author of Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (HarperCollins, 2006). His next book on Yiddish, Just Say Nu, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in the fall.

Articles by
Michael Wex

Red-Tinted Yiddish

How the USSR tried to Sovietize the Jews using their own language and traditions March 2007
Jews who hate Yiddish and Yiddish culture—a considerable number since the 18th century, most of them native speakers—are often at pains to point out that the use of this purely tribal language forms a barrier between the Jews and their gentile neighbours, a hurdle to mutual understanding that often contributes to the growth of anti-Semitism and virtually always gets in the way of Jewish…