Courses
2018 Course Listing:
Beginner I Yiddish – Grammar
Chana (Alyssa) Masor
In this class students will learn to read, write, speak and understand Yiddish. We begin from the very beginning and through grammar, conversation, literary texts and songs, we will learn the basics of the language.
Students are expected to know the alphabet. Those who do not yet know the Yiddish alphabet are invited to participate in an alef-beys workshop on Sunday, June 24th. You will also be sent materials to help you learn it. Tutoring will be available the first week on an as-needed basis.
Books for the course: Sheva Zucker, Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vol. 1. (It is estimated that we will cover the first 10 chapters.)
Dictionaries: Required – Beinfeld and Bochner, Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (This will be available online to students of the program for the duration of the program.)
Highly Suggested – Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary or Yiddish dictionary in student’s native language.
Beginner I Yiddish – Literature
Paula (Perl) Teitelbaum
GOALS
To develop aural/oral language skills, and support the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar structures while focusing on reading texts.
To introduce students to accessible literature through varied genres: children’s poems, songs, folk and traditional stories, modern poetry.
To support the following reading skills: decoding, comprehension, interpretation and literary analysis.
ACTIVITIES
Students will engage in Yiddish conversation at the start of class to build class cohesiveness and oral fluency.
Teacher will present incidental grammar lessons as they are needed by grammatical structures found in the reading texts, leaving the formal systematic introduction of grammar to co-teacher.
Students will pre-read texts for homework for vocabulary definitions and comprehension, and prepare questions about items they don’t understand or are confused by.
Students will do pre-reading activities to assess relevant student knowledge and experience, and exploit context clues in order to facilitate comprehension.
Students will listen to teacher read for prosody, sentence and word stress, comprehension etc.
Students will read aloud in pairs, then individually for the whole class.
Teacher will give feedback on stress and pronunciation and grouping words into phrases.
Students discuss content, form and anything else.
MATERIAL
Sheva Zucker, Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture, Vol. 1
Beginner II Yiddish – Grammar
Paula (Perl) Teitelbaum
GOALS
To learn basic Yiddish grammar when listening, reading, speaking and writing on a variety of everyday topics and acquire more complex grammatical structures. Also, attention will be paid to phonetic rules and word and sentence stress to aid listening comprehension and pronunciation when speaking and reading aloud.
Grammatical structures also taught at the beginners 1 level, such as, past participles used in past with both auxiliaries, with & without the prefix ge-, modal verbs & what follows them, article & adjective forms in nominative, accusative and dative cases, word order will be taught at a faster pace in this class of students who already have an introduction to the language.
ACTIVITIES
In class students will listen, speak, and read as a class as well as work in pairs and small groups. We will work with the above-mentioned textbook, song texts, and teacher designed materials.
Homework will include listening, reading, writing and preparing to speak. It will be a combination of studying, doing grammar exercises and working on communicating in Yiddish.
Teacher will give feedback on stress and pronunciation and grouping words into phrases.
Students discuss content, form and anything else.
MATERIAL
Sheva Zucker, Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture, Vol. 1
Beginner II Yiddish – Literature
Anna Fishman Gonshor
This course will serve to help students develop their reading and comprehension skills, while introducing them to modern Yiddish culture and Literature. We will explore the rise of the modern Yiddish schools in Europe and the Americas and and the literature created specifically for children. The students will be introduced to some of the principal writers of that genre. In addition, through a thematic approach, students will discover some of the key personalities of modern Yiddish Literature.
The course will focus on reading in class, questions related to the text for homework as well as reading prep, class discussions and eventually short compositions. All of this is aimed at improving reading and comprehension skills and building vocabulary.
Intermediate I Yiddish – Grammar
Joshua Price
Designed for students with one year (or the equivalent) of college-level Yiddish, this course, taught in Yiddish, will cover a variety of grammatical topics with an eye to cultivating skills for the unscripted and idiomatic use of language — speaking, reading, writing, listening — in academic and social settings. Our primary focus will be on: the comparative and superlative; verbal prefixes; relative clauses; advanced syntactic constructions; and the pitshevkes of tense, aspect, mood, and voice. Even as klal-shprakh will be our north star, examples will be drawn from the widest possible range of sources so as to prepare students for the gloriously ungovernable and polycentric terrain of Yiddishland: modernist poetry, middlebrow fiction, the daily press from interwar Warsaw to contemporary Boro Park, popular folksongs. Homework will take the form of standard exercises, translations, and (short) compositions, along with a quiz every two weeks and a final oral presentation.
Required textbook: Sheva Zucker, Yiddish: An Introduction to The Language, Literature and Culture; a Textbook for Intermediate Students, Volume 2 (Workmen’s Circle, 2002; ISBN 1877909750).
Intermediate I Yiddish – Literature
Sheva Zucker
In this course students will read works of modern Yiddish literature in a variety of genres – poetry, prose, memoir, essay – by writers going back as far as Reb Nakhmen Broslever and Sholem Aleichem to modern writers creating into the late twentieth and early twenty-first century such as Tsvi Ayzenman and Yonia Fain. Some of the other writers to be studied include prose writers Yitskhok-Leybish Peretz, I.B. Singer and Moyshe Kulbak, poets Kadye Molodowsky, Anna Margolin, Itsik Manger and Reyzl Zhikhlinski, and memoirists Hinde Bergner and Puah Rakvoski. Students can expect approximately an hour of homework a day (either reading or written assignments). In addition to printed materials students will also practice reading handwritten letters. Students will also be exposed to various orthographies other than Standard YIVO spelling.
Each student will choose a Yiddish prose book (which he/she can bring or choose from those provided by the instructor) and will be required to read from 8-15 pages a week, depending on the difficulty of the text and the ability of the student.
Homework will aid students in comprehending the texts as well as require them to think and write about them analytically. The skills that the students will acquire will enable them to read texts in the original, independently.
Books for the course: Course pack of readings provided by the instructor
Yiddish prose book of student’s choosing at level appropriate to student. (See above)
Dictionaries: Required – Beinfeld and Bochner, Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (This will be available online at YIVO to students of the program for the duration of the program.)
Highly Suggested – Yitskhok Niborski, Verterbukh fun Loshn-koydesh-shtamike verter in Yidish;
Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary or Yiddish dictionary in student’s native language
All dictionaries are available in the Center for Jewish History reading room.
Intermediate II Yiddish – Grammar
Yankl-Peretz Blum
This course aims to help intermediate students advance in their comprehension and production of Yiddish. Emphasis will be placed on learning implicitly (by exposure to the language in a communicative context) supplemented by explicit learning and reviewing of grammar rules in class. Additionally, there will be a focus on developing good language-learning habits.
Students can expect about an hour of homework a day, including weekends. To a great extent this homework will consist of “free reading” (or “free listening”) assignments, coupled with a short writing exercise to summarize what the student has read or heard. There will be additional writing assignments with the goal of composing articles for the Yiddish Wikipedia on topics of the students' choosing.
Discussion in class of specific topics in Yiddish grammar, idiom, vocabulary, and pronunciation will be primarily based on students' individual needs and interests, especially as exposed through the homework and in-class assignments. The course will be conducted entirely in Yiddish.
Intermediate II Yiddish – Literature
Anna Fishman Gonshor
This course aims to introduce students to the broad range of literary creativity known as Modern Yiddish Literature. Through folk- tales, classic Yiddish children's literature and the gamut of literary genres it represents, students will encounter the important writers, the diverse themes and styles represented therein. Fridays will be devoted to reading "Motl Peyse dem Khazns" by Sholem Aleichem, annotated and revised by Sheva Zucker. This will provide the students the opportunity to read a complete work by one author. At the same time, the annotated aspect will allow for better comprehension and language acquisition. Students are expected to participate fully in class, preparing readings in advance of the class and doing homework assignments on time.
The course will consist of readings, question and answer assignments as well as narrative summaries. Towards the end there will be several essays. The skills that the students will acquire will enable them to read texts in the original, independently.
The reading materials will be provided but students are strongly encouraged to have the following dictionary:
Beinfeld and Bochner, Comprehensive Yiddish - English Dictionary
Advanced Yiddish – Grammar
Dovid Braun
This course is designed to help students who already have considerable proficiency in the Yiddish language further to hone their skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking. The curriculum includes:
- Formal study of grammar using Mordkhe Schaechter’s Yidish Tsvey and other grammars in Yiddish.
- Listening to recordings of Yiddish speakers of various dialects.
- Reading and writing texts in various styles (e.g. folk story, newspaper article, memoir, essay).
Emphasis is placed throughout on building vocabulary, improving grammatical accuracy and using a rich, idiomatic language. Homework will include grammar exercises, listening assignments, and writing projects.
Required text: Mordkhe Schaechter, Yidish tsvey: A lernbukh far mitndike un vaythalters/Yiddish II: An Intermediate and Advanced Textbook (New York: Yiddish Language Resource Center of the League for Yiddish, 2003).
Advanced Yiddish – Literature
Sheva Zucker
In this course students will read works of modern Yiddish literature in a variety of genres – prose, poetry, memoir, essay – by writers going back as far as Abramovitsh (Mendele) to modern authors creating into the late twentieth and early twenty-first century such as Avrom Karpinovitsh and Yonia Fain. Some of the other writers to be studied include Sholem Aleichem, Y.L. Peretz, I.B. Singer, Kadye Molodowsky, Anna Margolin, Sore Shenirer, Rokhl Faygenberg, Moyshe Kulbak, Yankev Glatshteyn, Avrom Sutzkever, Aaron Tseytlin and Der Tunkeler. Students can expect approximately an hour of homework a day (either reading or written assignments). In addition to printed materials students will listen to recordings of Yiddish speakers speaking in various dialects and will also practice reading handwritten letters. Students will also be exposed to various orthographies other than Standard YIVO spelling.
Each student will choose a Yiddish prose book (which he/she can bring or choose from those provided by the instructor) and will be required to read from 8-15 pages a week, depending on the difficulty of the text and the ability of the student.
Books for the course: Course pack of readings provided by the instructor
Yiddish prose book of student’s choosing at level appropriate to student. (See above)
Dictionaries: Required – Beinfeld and Bochner, Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (This will be available online at YIVO to students of the program for the duration of the program.)
Highly Suggested – Yitskhok Niborski, Verterbukh fun Loshn-koydesh-shtamike verter in Yidish;
Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary or Yiddish dictionary in student’s native language
History and Culture Seminars
Students are required to take one of the following three courses:
The Emergence of Modern Yiddish Culture
Prof. Joshua Karlip
Conducted in English.
For nearly a millennium, Yiddish served as the spoken language of Ashkenazic Jewry. For most of this period, however, Yiddish speakers regarded their spoken language as inferior to Hebrew. This course will explore the cultural movement that sought to elevate the prestige of Yiddish from the language of the marketplace to that of the literary salon and the theater. We will begin the class with a discussion of the internal bilingualism of traditional, pre-modern Ashkenazic Jewry. We then will analyze how the twin processes of the politicization and secularization of East European Jewish life transformed the role of Yiddish. We will study both the elite and the popular forms of modern Yiddish culture, including the press, literature, scholarship and the theater. We also will concentrate on the ideology of Yiddishism and contrast the visions of this ideology’s two main proponents: Chaim Zhitlovsky and I. L. Peretz. We also will discuss the transformations in Yiddish culture during and in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. We will end the course with a discussion of both the continuities and crises in Yiddish culture as its representatives confronted the Holocaust.
This course will expose the students to the history of modern Yiddish culture and the Yiddishist movement. At the same time, it will help to elucidate the relationship of modern Yiddish culture to Jewish politics.
Yiddish Literature by Women
Prof. Anita Norich
Conducted in English.
Why focus on stories and poems written by women in Yiddish? The simplest answer is because they are underrepresented in anthologies, literary criticism, and course offerings. In this course, we will consider less simple questions: Why are women primarily known (if at all) as poets? What are the themes that concerned them? How did they write about domestic issues, love, sexuality, politics, history, and more? What effect did modernist literary movements have on their writing? How have translators and critics interpreted their writing? Focusing on short works by several writers who have been translated into English, we will address these and other questions. Writers include Anna Margolin, Esther Singer Kreitman, Kadya Molodovsky, Celia Dropkin, Malka Heifetz Tussman, Fradel Shtock, Chava Rosenfarb, Rokhl Korn, Blume Lempel.
שטייגער און לשון
Shteyger un loshn
Chava Lapin
Conducted in Yiddish.
This course will provide appropriate samples of literature, calendars, and lifecycle materials, historic and ritual sources, in Yiddish, that reflect the stages, styles, beliefs, family relationships, education, music, and morals of East European Jewry over the centuries.
Basic literacy and the ability to read simple assignments independently is expected.
Electives
Research Methods in Yiddish Studies
Cecile (Tsirl-ester) Kuznitz
This course will introduce students to some of the most important tools for research in Yiddish Studies. Particular attention will be paid to YIVO’s library and archival collections, their history and organization, as well as newly-accessible sources recently digitized as part of the YIVO Vilna Collections Project. Topics to be covered include catalogs and finding aids to the YIVO collections; bibliographies, dictionaries, lexicons, and other key reference works; and online databases and full-text resources. The instructor will do her best to tailor the course according to the interests of enrolled students.
Session 1
Overview of bibliography and resources for research in Yiddish Studies; Introduction to the YIVO collections
Session 2
Doing research in the YIVO collections: Catalogs and finding aids; Online resources; Overview of YIVO publications
Session 3
Yiddish dictionaries and lexicons
Session 4
The Yiddish press: Indexes; Full text resources; reference works
The Art of Yiddish Translation (Workshop)
Barbara Harshav
Translations of Yiddish texts appear to be extremely problematic. Finding the right register in English to convey situations in Yiddish culture is often difficult to impossible and seldom conveys the tone and nuance of the original.
This course will examine such problems as how translations influence the meanings of the original texts. We will compare various translations of the same text to determine what choices the translator has made and how that informs the meaning of the texts. There will also be a workshop component in which students will be asked to make their own translations in an attempt to experience how translations are made.
How does a translator remain faithful to both the content and the style of a text? Is Yiddish more difficult to translate than other languages? In what ways can a translator capture the significance of Yiddish’s use of its Hebraic, Germanic, and Slavic components? These questions and others will be explored in depth.
The general objective of the course is to understand the process of translation and how it shapes our understanding. The idea is to create more sensitive and perceptive readers of translation.
ייִדן און ייִדיש אין ניו־יאָרק
Yidn un yidish in nyu york
Jews and Yiddish in New York
Curt Leviant and Prof. Daniel Soyer
Conducted in Yiddish.
Course description coming soon.
Leyenen Hantgeshribene Dokumentn
Reading Handwritten Yiddish Documents
Yankl Salant
Conducted in Yiddish.
This five-session hands-on workshop is for Advanced and Intermediate students only. The more Yiddish you know, the better. We will view together enlarged on a screen a great variety of handwritten documents from different historical periods and geographical provenances—from filled-in certificates to letters to literary manuscripts and more. Students will learn to recognize how orthography is affected by level of education, dialect, social conventions, emotional state and other factors. The samples will increase in difficulty as the workshop progresses.
Yidishe lider — fun haynt un amol, zeltene un farshpreyte
Yiddish Songs — New and Old, Rare and Well-Known
Josh Waletzky
A “hands on” introduction to a range of Yiddish songs, from late 19th century to the present day, on diverse themes, and in a variety of musical styles. Everybody sings! (with or without vocal training or experience). Emphasis is placed on singing as a means of cultivating comfort with pronunciation. An introduction to the grammar of Yiddish music. A great way to enjoy the pleasures of Yiddish poetry, from folk-texts to the lyrics of the likes of Avrom Goldfaden, Itsik Manger, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, and today's songwriters.
A Gantse Shaleshudes: The three meals in Yiddish
Eve Jochnowitz
The Yiddish world has a unique understanding of flavors and perception of flavors. Yiddish songs and proverbs express the inexpressible spectrum of emotions and experiences through the familiar medium of the understanding of Jewish food. This course will offer a taste of the flavors of pain and pleasure in Yiddish spoken, written and material culture to examine how taste and flavor are understood in Yiddish folklore and literature with attention to a few special historical cases.
Yiddish Song
Eléonore Biezunski, Devora Geller, and Alex Weiser
This course will examine three genres of Yiddish language songs: folk songs, theater songs, and classical art songs. Taught in English by members of YIVO’s staff in their areas of speciality, Eléonore Biezunski will lead a session on Yiddish folk song with a special focus on YIVO’s Ruth Rubin field recordings collection, Devora Geller will lead a session on Yiddish theater songs with a focus on published and recorded songs available in YIVO’s Archive, and Alex Weiser will lead a session on Yiddish art songs discussing the genre’s birth in Eastern Europe and Russia, and its continuation throughout the Jewish diaspora. Each session will focus on listening to musical samples which will be examined alongside the song texts in their original Yiddish as well as in English translation. The sessions will also address the history of each genre, and will include a bibliography of sources for future exploration and inquiry by interested students.