Kissing Through a Veil: A History of Jewish Translation
Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**
This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Google Classroom. Students will be granted access to the class on Google Classroom after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.
Instructor: Ilan Stavans
Since biblical times, translation has been an essential component of Jewish life, religious and secular. The course focuses on major translators and endeavors across languages, such as Onkelos and the Septuagint, the ibn Tibbon family, the Toledo school, Moses Mendelssohn, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Robert Alter, and others. Languages include Hebrew, Aramaic, Ladino, Spanish, Portuguese, Yiddish, German, English, Russian, French, and Italian. Thinkers like Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, George Steiner, and Ilan Stavans will be pondered. Specific renditions of the Torah, Sefer- ha-Zohar, Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, the Hasidic masters, Chaim Nakhman Bialik, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, Anne Frank, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Elie Wiesel, etc., will be closely analyzed.
Course Materials:
Students should purchase the following texts:
- Stavans, Ilan. Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press). (Purchase)
- Stavans, Ilan. Fictional Translations: Poems (Louisiana State University Press). (Purchase)
The instructor will provide all other course materials digitally throughout the class on Google Classroom.
Questions? Read our 2027 Winter Program FAQ.
Ilan Stavans is is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous international awards and honors, his work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, TV, radio, and theater. His latest books are Conversations on Dictionaries: The Universe in a Book, Lamentations of Nezahualcoyotl: Nahuatl Poems, and, most recently, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands.
**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.