Beginner I Reading Yiddish

Class starts Feb 14 1:00pm-2:50pm

Tuition: $680 | YIVO members: $535**
Students: $340 (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: Josh Price

Who should take this course?
This course is for students who are new to reading and writing in the Yiddish language or would like a review. Those interested in obtaining Yiddish reading proficiency for academic purposes or archival research are strongly encouraged to enroll in this course.

What topics will this class cover?
This course is designed to build literacy in Yiddish, the vernacular of Ashkenazi Jewry. It is especially geared towards equipping graduate students with reading and translation skills needed for research. Our focus for the first two thirds of the semester will be an accelerated treatment of Yiddish grammar, supplemented with simple primary texts. The last third will be devoted to close readings of Yiddish literature across four centuries and will serve as an informal introduction to its wide-ranging canon: the tradition of “women's literature”; kabbalistic fairy tales; classical writing on shtetl life at the cusp of modernity; and the burdens of memorialization. Along the way we will encounter Yiddishland in all of its ungovernability: labor anthems, folksongs, (ir)reverent holiday liturgies, modernist poetry, savage cartoons, Hasidic tweets, and everything in between. Additionally, students will translate a (short) text of their own choosing, to be presented to the class in a final workshop.

Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
No, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is not required. However, students who have no prior experience with reading and writing the Yiddish or Hebrew alphabets are highly encouraged to familiarize themselves with the Yiddish alphabet before class, as the course will move at a fast pace. The tools and videos provided here will be helpful in getting a handle on reading and writing the alef-beys, and are designed for independent use.

Course Materials:
Students are required to purchase a Yiddish-English dictionary. The instructor recommends the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary, edited by Solon Beinfeld and Harry Bochner. Students can purchase online access or the physical book. YIVO students will receive a discount for the online dictionary after enrolling in the course. The instructor will provide all other course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Questions? Read our 2024 Spring Classes FAQ.

Joshua Price is a lector in Yiddish at Yale. He received his Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies at Columbia, with a dissertation on the translation of world literature into Yiddish in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through studies of the relationship between translation and original writing in canonical figures (Mendele—Jules Verne, Der Nister—Hans Christian Andersen, Isaac Bashevis Singer—Thomas Mann, etc.), distant readings of translations produced and discussed in and across literary markets (Warsaw, New York, Moscow), and close(r) readings of the shift from (pre-)maskilic norms of Judaization to modern and contested standards of “fidelity,” his dissertation examines the desired and intermittently realized modernization and “normalization” of Yiddish literature on the world stage.

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