Beginner Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners (Morning)

Instructor: Mikhl Yashinsky

This beginner's conversational Yiddish course will draw on lively in-class discussion and multimedia materials such as art, film, and song, all designed to get students speaking freely as they discover and re-discover elements of Yiddish language and culture together, without fear, but rather with much freyd (joy). Students will be beginners who have had some exposure to Yiddish in their lives, and maybe know a word or expression or two, but lack the basics of grammar and vocabulary, which will be provided in this course. No knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required, as 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). Likewise, no proficiency in Yiddish conversation is required, as we will be starting "fun breyshes" (from Genesis) — that is to say, at the very beginning!

Course Materials:
There is no textbook required for this course. The instructor will provide all course materials digitally to students throughout the class.

Born in Detroit and educated at Harvard, Mikhl Yashinsky is an actor-director, writer, and Yiddish teacher and translator. He recently appeared with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in the Drama Desk-winning Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof, directed by Joel Grey, and in The Sorceress (a New York Times Critic’s Pick), for which performance he was hailed by the Times for giving a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role. Forthcoming publications include his translation of the memoirs of theatrical pioneer Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (Syracuse University Press), and In eynem (Yiddish Book Center), a new Yiddish textbook he co-authored. He has taught Yiddish at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and taught the language this summer through YIVO’s Summer Program. In 2019, he was named to the Forward 50, the historic newspaper’s annual list of “influential, intriguing, and inspiring” American Jews. www.yashinsky.com

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