Moishele Alfonso received his B.A. in German, French and Italian from the University of Memphis. He attended the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in 2018 and participated in the Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish Pedagogy Fellowship (2018-19) and the Yiddish Pedagogy Practicum (2021-22). He has taught Yiddish at the Yiddish Book Center, the Workers Circle, and at Kadimah in Melbourne, Australia. In 2025, Moishele, together with the League for Yiddish, published a Yiddish graded reader for students entitled: Afn veg: Zibn dertseylungen fun Y.L. Perets (Pathways: Seven Short Stories by I.L. Peretz).
Dovid (David) Braun has taught all levels of Yiddish language at YIVO's intensive summer program since 1990 at Columbia University and New York University. He initiated and taught in the intensive summer programs of the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA) and Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw, Poland). He has taught Yiddish language, Yiddish linguistics, and/or general linguistics as a faculty member of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and he regularly participates in varied research projects involving Yiddish language and culture. He serves as co-president of the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center (Bronx, NY) which is now the only NYC area venue where public Yiddish cultural events are held on a regular basis.
Nachum (Nokhem) Lerner was raised in a Yiddish-loving home in Miami Beach, Florida. He studied Yiddish language and literature at Bar Ilan University, the YIVO Summer Program (at Columbia University), and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, he holds an MA in modern Jewish history and literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has taught Yiddish at the Workers Circle, Makor, the 92nd Street Y, Yeshiva University and JTS, and has taught at the YIVO-Bard Summer Program since 2023.
Dr. Adi Mahalel is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Yiddish Studies at the University of Maryland. He received his doctoral degree in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University. His book, The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism, was published by SUNY Press in 2023. Adi’s areas of interest include modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, Jewish cultures in modern times, and the crossroads between culture and politics. He has published articles and translations on these subjects in multiple languages, and has taught in various institutions.
Lili Rosen (she/they) is an actress, writer, director and cultural consultant raised in a Yiddish-speaking home in Hasidic Brooklyn. Her translation of “You be You! The Kid’s Guide to Gender, Sexuality and Family” — the first published work in Yiddish on the subject! — is now available from Ben Yehuda Press. She is also a contributor to the seminal Yiddish textbook In Eynem, from the Yiddish Book Center. Dubbed by Airmail Magazine “Hollywood’s Yiddish Consultant,” her TV/film credits include the Emmy-winning Unorthodox (Netflix), Amazon Prime’s Undone, Apple TV’s Little America, and the award-winning Ukrainian Yiddish film SHTTL. Lili is a past artist- and scholar-in residence at LABA NY, where she developed her solo show The Second Circumcision of Lili Rosen. She is also the past managing director of New Yiddish Repertory Theater in which capacity she translated, produced and starred in numerous Yiddish productions, including Waiting for Godot, Rhinoceros and the New York Times critic’s pick God of Vengeance.
Boris Sandler was born in 1950 in Beltz (Bessarabia). In 1975 he graduated from the Music Conservatory of Kishinev and played violin in the Moldavian Symphony Orchestra. From 1989-1992, Sandler was the President of the Yiddish Cultural Organization of Moldavia, and from 1990 until his immigration to Israel in 1992, was the Yiddish Editor of the bilingual journal Undzer Kol (Our Voice) in Kishinev. In 1981 Sandler was among the first cohort of Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature at the graduate level in the USSR since Stalin's purge of Yiddish writers in the late 1940s. He is the author of 27 books of fiction and poetry in Yiddish and translated into other languages: Russian, English, French, German, Hebrew, Dutch and Romanian. Sandler is the author of two documentary film scripts, Don't Give Up, Yiddish (1991) and Where is My Home? (1992), which dealt with the fate of Bessarabian Jewry. In 1998 Sandler moved to New York to begin working at the Yiddish edition of Forverts (The Forward). Besides his work as a writer and editor Sandler also produced a series of ten documentary films about the lives of Yiddish writers. Additionally, Sandler oversaw the production of several thousand hours of Forverts’ weekly Yiddish radio show, and produced a dozen CDs of Yiddish music and audio books, which were released under the aegis of Forverts. Sandler retired from the "Yiddish Forward" in 2016 after 18 years as editor-in-chief. He continues to publish his own fiction as well as the works of others in the online publication Yidish Branzhe, which he founded and edits.
Perl (Paula) Teitelbaum was born and raised in a Yiddish-speaking home in post-war Wroclaw. After immigrating to the United States in 1967, Paula became actively involved in New York City’s Yiddish-speaking circles. During her professional career Paula has taught Yiddish as well as Spanish and English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESL) in a variety of settings, including college, and pre-K through high school and adult education classes. Using her TESOL background Paula has applied some of the most successful teaching methods into her Yiddish classes.
Mikhl Yashinsky is a writer, singer-actor, and teacher in Manhattan. He was born in Detroit and graduated with a degree in modern European history and literature from Harvard. His “Di psure loyt khaim” (The Gospel According to Chaim), put on by New Yiddish Rep in 2024, was hailed as the first new full-length Yiddish-language drama produced professionally in the United States, outside of the Hasidic world, for many decades and “jolted the repertoire with a work that is both traditional and delightfully subversive” (Forward). His Yiddish-language erotic one-act “Vos flist durkhn oder” (Blessing of the New Moon) premièred at 2022’s Lower East Side Play Festival. With National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he has performed in “Fidler afn dakh” (Fiddler on the Roof) directed by Joel Grey, “Tsvishn falndike vent” (Amid Falling Walls) and “Di kishef-makherin” (The Sorceress), in which Mikhl brought a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role (New York Times). In 2023, Yashinsky made his Carnegie Hall début, singing the anthem of the Vilna Partisans in the Holocaust memorial concert “We Are Here.” He has taught Yiddish at Columbia, University of Michigan, Tel Aviv University, UMass Amherst, the Yiddish Book Center, YIVO, and The Workers Circle, and co-authored the award-winning textbook “In eynem.” His translations of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, the “Mama of Yiddish Theatre,” and the detective stories of Max Spitzkopf, the “Yiddish Sherlock Holmes,” were published in 2025 by Bloomsbury and the Yiddish Book Center, respectively. More information on his website: www.yashinsky.com
SEMINARS & ELECTIVES
Shane Baker, himself a graduate of the Weinreich Summer Program, is a Yiddish activist, actor and translator. His Yiddish translation of Waiting for Godot for the New Yiddish Rep, in which he also played Vladimir, has played Off-Broadway and internationally to critical acclaim. As director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, Baker has published numerous Yiddish books and journals and produced innumerable Yiddish events. He is pleased to be able to share with upcoming generations of Yidishistn.
Photo by Jack Toolin
Eléonore Biezunski is a Parisian singer/violinist now living in NYC. An avid collector of Yiddish music, she co-founded and is a member of Ephemeral Birds, Yerushe, Lyubtshe, Shpilkes, Shtetl Stompers and Klezmographers and has collaborated with a large number of well-known Jewish performers here and abroad. Her recordings include Yerushe (IEMJ, 2016) and Zol zayn (2014). As YIVO’s Associate Sound Archivist, Eléonore is the Project Coordinator for the Ruth Rubin Legacy online exhibition. She is a PhD candidate at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is a recipient of a NYSCA Folk Arts Apprenticeship. www.eleonorebiezunski.com
Jonathan Boyarin is the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Cornell University. His most recent book is Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side (Princeton 2020). His translations from the Yiddish include Menashe Unger’s A Fire Burns in Kotsk (Wayne State 2014).
Ofer Dynes is Leonard Kaye Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at Harvard University (September 2016) and held a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University (2016-2018). Before coming to Columbia, he was an Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught classes in eastern European Jewish literature and history and served as the head of the Program in Yiddish Studies. Dynes specializes in the literature and cultural history of Eastern European Jewry from the 18th to 21st centuries. He has a particular interest in the nexus of literature and political thought. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The Fiction of the State: The Polish Partitions and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Literature (1772–1848). He has also recently co-edited a special volume of Prooftexts, entitled The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Literature in Europe,with Naomi Seidman (University of Toronto). Dynes is a co-founder and organizer of the Hebrew Lab Faculty Seminar, a New-York based workgroup for scholars in Hebrew Literature.
Eve Jochnowitz, Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute and the Workers Circle, is an institute fellow at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Jochnowitz has been teaching Yiddish language, culture, and literature, as well as Yiddish foodways and dance, for 25 years. She worked for several years as a cook and baker in New York and received her Ph.D. from the department of Performance Studies at New York University. She has lectured both in the United States and abroad on food in Jewish tradition, religion, and ritual, as well as on food in Yiddish performance and popular culture. The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (Fania Lewando’s Vegetarish-dietisher kokhbukh) translated, annotated, and adapted for the modern kitchen, was published in 2015.
Cecile E. Kuznitz is Associate Professor and Patricia Ross Weis '52 Chair in Jewish History and Culture at Bard College. She is the author of YIVO and The Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation. She has recently held the Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ruth Meltzer fellowship at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania.
Anita Norich is Collegiate Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the translator of Desires by Tsilye Dropkin (2024), Fear and Other Stories by Chana Blankshteyn (2022), A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky(2019), numerous short stories, among them the previously untranslated stories of Israel Joshua Singer and Esther Kreitman, and, with Ellen Cassedy, Hand to Hand by Rashel Veprinski (2025). She is also the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century; Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Literature in America During the Holocaust;and The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer.
Eddy Portnoy is the Senior Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The exhibitions he has created for YIVO have won plaudits from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE, The Forward, and others. He has written numerous articles on topics relating to Jewish popular culture and is also the author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017).
Photo by Adam
Berry
Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics. He has also appeared on recordings and in live shows with Itzhak Perlman, Chava Alberstein and Emmylou Harris, among many others, and teaches Yiddish song from São Paulo to St. Petersburg. Ongoing: Saints and Tzadiks (Irish and Yiddish songs with Susan McKeown), the Semer Ensemble (Jewish music from 1930s Berlin), Alpen Klezmer (Bavarian and Yiddish songs), Drawing Life (multi-media song cycle, JMI, London), Sklamberg and the Shepherds, In the Fiddler’s House and the Nigunim Trio. Lorin serves as YIVO’s Sound Archivist. “One of the premier American singers in any genre.” – Robert Christgau
Tom Tearney holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pennsylvania and an MSt in Yiddish Studies from the University of Oxford (Wolfson College). He previously worked as an indexer and researcher at the USC Shoah Foundation and completed research internships at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main. He speaks Yiddish and German and has intermediate skills in Polish, Hebrew, and Italian.
Photo by Nomi Ellenson
Jeffrey Yoskowitz is the co-founder of The Gefilteria and co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods. Jeffrey speaks to audiences around the world as an entrepreneur, a writer, a cook and a pickler. His writings on food and culture appear in major publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Forward, among others. In 2014, he was invited as a guest chef at the James Beard House kitchen and was named to both Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 list for Food and Wine and the Forward 50. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
