Vunderlekh! Online News in Yiddish

The Forward is going back to its roots and is about to launch the “Forverts” Yiddish-language website, further evidence of the incredible survival of the Yiddish language.

New York hosts approximately 80,000 Chassidic Jews who speak Yiddish at home, and the community’s birth rate is soaring.

The Forward will bring the Forverts site online on Monday and hopes to reach an international audience of Yiddish speakers.

Ironically, the liberal Forward newspaper is often considered by the Haredi community to be anti-religious, and the editorial policy will remain secular and liberal.

Publisher Samuel Norich told Reuters that online photographs of women probably will offend many Haredi readers but that the Internet makes it easier for people to read the news in privacy rather than facing criticism that would come from reading a “non-kosher” newspaper in front of others.

The Forward publishes only about 2,000 copies of its Forverts Yiddish language newspaper, and more than half of the readers are theirs 80s and 90s.