Yiddish and Yidishkeyt in the Lives and Work of Max Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum

Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**
 

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This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, 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 Yiddish.

Instructor: Kalman Weiser

In this course, we’ll explore the intertwined biographies and careers of Max Weinreich, YIVO’s guiding figure, and Solomon Birnbaum, the first professor of Yiddish in a modern university. Both came from the German cultural sphere but devoted themselves to research about Yiddish and Jewish languages–first in Europe and, later, in the English-speaking world. They were also rivals who sought to advance competing visions of Yiddish. Reading the writings of the secularist Weinreich and the haredi Birnbaum, we’ll discuss such topics as their understanding of the relationship between Yiddish and Jewishness, Birnbaum’s critique of “YIVO Yiddish,” and their theories about the history of Yiddish. 

ייִדיש און ייִדישקייט בײַ מאַקס ווײַנרײַכן און שלמה בירנבוימען 

אין דעם קורס וועלן מיר זיך לערנען וועגן מאַקס ווײַנרײַכן און שלמה בירנבוימען, גדולים אין דער ייִדיש-פֿאָרשונג אין 20סטן י״ה. דער וועלטלעכער ווײַנרײַך האָט כּידוע אָנגעפֿירט מיטן ייִוואָ אין ווילנע און אין ניו-יאָרק, ווי אױך געשריבן וואָגיקע אַרבעטן וועגן דער ייִדישער שפּראַך- און קולטור-געשיכטע. דער פֿרומער בירנבוים איז געווען טעטיק אין די קרײַזן פֿון אגודת-ישראל נאָר איז אויך געוואָרן דער ערשטער לערער פֿון ייִדישער שפּראַך, ליטעראַטור און לינגוויסטיק אין אַ מאָדערנער אוניווערסיטעט. ער איז אויך געווען דער גרינדער פֿון דער העברעיִשער פּאַלעאָגראַפֿיע . זיי זענען געווען קאָלעגן און אויך קאָנקורענטן אין משך פֿון  פֿופֿקציק יאָר.  מיר וועלן לייענען און אַרומרעדן זייערע אַרבעטן כּדי צו פֿאַרשטיין זייערע טעאָריעס וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדיש און דער באַציִונג צווישן ייִדיש און ייִדישקייט אַזוי ווי זייערע באַזונדערע צוגאַנגען צו דער ייִדישער כּלל-שפּראַך. 

Yiddish Level:
This course, conducted in Yiddish, is designed for upper intermediate and advanced Yiddish students, or those with a strong ability to understand written and spoken Yiddish.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all required course materials digitally throughout the class on Google Classroom.

Kalman Weiser is the Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and the Director of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. A native of NYC (BA, Yale; MA and PhD, Columbia), he is the author of several studies about Jewish nationalism and Jews’ relationship to language, especially in Eastern Europe. His study Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland won the 2012 Canadian Jewish Book Award for scholarship. He is also a contributor to and co-editor of Czernowitz at 100: the First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective (2010); a revised and expanded edition of Solomon Birnbaum's seminal work Yiddish: a Survey and a Grammar (2016); and Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism (2021). In 2018, he was the co-organizer of Teaching about Antisemitism in the 21st Century, an intensive summer institute for advanced graduate students and junior faculty that is scheduled to be renewed in 2023. He has recently completed the manuscript for a book about Nazi scholars of Yiddish and their relationships with Jewish colleagues before, during, and after World War II. Weiser regularly teaches courses about modern Jewish and general Eastern European history, antisemitism, Yiddish, and Jewish languages. He has lectured widely in the US, Europe, Japan, and Israel.

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