Beginner Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners

Class starts Mar 6 4:00pm-5:30pm

Tuition: $480 | YIVO members: $375**
Students: $240 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in Yiddish and English.

Instructor: Malena Chinski

Who should take this course?
This course is appropriate for students with some basic familiarity with spoken Yiddish.

What topics will this class cover?
In this class, students will strengthen and expand their Yiddish linguistic and cultural heritage. With the teacher’s close guidance, and the support of visual materials and listening practice, students will be encouraged to communicate among themselves in Yiddish as much as possible. Conversation topics will cover daily life, as well as Jewish holidays and customs. Communicational goals and vocabulary will include professions, hobbies, food, the house, and describing people. Grammar points intended to improve communicational skills will include modal verbs, prepositions, and declension of proper names and articles. Additional materials, such as Yiddish songs, proverbs and short stories transcribed in Latin characters, will be proposed by the instructor according to the group’s interests.

Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
No, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is not required. All written texts provided will be transliterated into Latin characters (and the focus of the course will be conversation as opposed to reading and writing).

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally on Canvas.

Questions? Read our 2024 Spring Classes FAQ.

Malena Chinski studied Yiddish at the IWO Foundation of Buenos Aires with Ester Szwarc and Avrom Lichtenbaum. She has recently taught beginner and intermediate classes at the Maison de la culture yiddish in Paris and in the Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature in Berlin. Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 2017 at the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento in Argentina, focused on the commemoration of the Shoah in Buenos Aires throughout the first postwar decade. During her postdoctoral fellowships in France at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah, she researched cultural initiatives and scholarly works undertaken by survivor Yiddish writers in Paris. Among her publications is a collective volume co-edited with Alan Astro, Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America (Brill, 2018).

**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.