My great-grandfather was a Russian Jew who immigrated to the US around 1910. He corresponded a few times with his father who seemed to move around between Russia and Poland. Here's a few samples of their correspondence:
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if this is an inappropriate post for this sub.
This is almost certainly Yiddish(essentially late medieval German in Hebrew script). I do not myself read Yiddish but /r/Judaism and /r/Yiddish would be able to help here.
/u/farquier is correct. What we have here is cursive Hebrew script which is why it looks so different from the writing on top. You may want ro journey over to /r/linguistics or /r/yiddish and see what they can do.
I don't have the time now for a full translation. The first letter is addressed to a Uncle Josef, and both the writer and the addressee are related to Nathan (grandson and great-grandson). /u/farquier is correct in that the text is mostly Yiddish, but it also contains some Hebrew words and phrases.
Thanks for all the responses! I'll give those other subs a shot.
To supplement what has already been said by u/farquier and others, the script is Hebrew Cursive, which was used to write Yiddish before modern Hebrew became popular. It's still used today, both to write Yiddish and Hebrew, and is basically what all handwritten Hebrew is today. You can even see it on modern signs and advertising, much like English cursive is sometimes used as a design choice. Here is Hebrew cursive being used in the Coca-Cola logo.
Also, interesting fact, Jaffa is now part of/surrounded by Tel Aviv (not sure if Jaffa is its own town anymore), so this letter is likely 60 years or older.
