The Yiddish Occult

Tuition: $240 | YIVO members: $180**
Students: $120 (Must register with valid university email address)
 

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This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 20 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 English.

Instructor: Samuel Glauber

Course Description:
Occult beliefs and practices are a widespread, if often overlooked, part of modern Yiddish culture. As Yiddish-speaking Jews became increasingly urbanized from the mid-19th century onwards, many held séances, visited psychics, and studied occult literature. This seminar offers a window into the Yiddish occult as it developed in Eastern Europe and North America. Along with a general introduction to modern Jewish engagement with the occult, students will explore how Yiddish-speaking Jews engaged with topics such as spirit communication, divination, telepathy, and the investigation of hidden realities. Both a popular movement and a topic of fascination for Yiddish writers and intellectuals, the Yiddish occult complicates prevalent notions of Jewish modernity.

All texts will be provided in English translation; Yiddish originals will be made available upon request.

Course Materials:
All course materials will be provided digitally by the instructor.

Samuel Glauber is the Miriam Barr Librarian for Jewish & Near Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. A scholar of modern Judaism specializing in East European Jewry and its diaspora communities, he is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he is writing a dissertation exploring Jewish engagement with modern occult currents in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Eastern Europe. His research develops an interdisciplinary approach to processes of religious and social change with a focus on the religious landscape of Eastern Europe; particular research interests include Jewish occultism, modern religious thought, and Yiddish press culture. His work has appeared in, among other journals, Nashim, Jewish Historical Studies, In geveb, Tradition, and Kabbalah, and he is co-editor of Hillel Zeitlin, In the Secret Place of the Soul: Three Essays (Jerusalem–Berlin: Blima Books, 2021). In 2021–2022, he held the Fellowship in American Jewish Studies at YIVO, where he worked on the archive of Yiddish writer and occultist B. Rivkin.

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