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Conducted in English, this course will trace the history of Yiddish cinema from its early years in Eastern Europe, through its Golden Age in both Poland and the United States in the 1930s, into today's renewed interest and possible renaissance. Yiddish films discussed will be subtitled in English.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will examine literary works and folklore collections that explore the social underworld and language of thieves within Yiddish-speaking Jewish life.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will transform an ordinary Zoom meeting into a theatrical salon as everyone will take turns reading a Yiddish play aloud—no acting experience required. Discussion of the play will be in Yiddish and English.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will read Yiddish texts published in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century.

Conducted in English, this course will teach a diverse body of Yiddish lullabies, both folksongs and ones created by beloved poets. Students will have an opportunity to work on proper pronunciation and align the song texts with the rhythm of natural Yiddish speech. Song texts will be provided in Yiddish, transliteration, and English translation.

Conducted in English, this course offers a close reading of Mississippi, a Yiddish play about the Scottsboro Boys debuted in 1935 by Warsaw-based experimental Yiddish theater troupe Yung Teater. The class will read a bilingual script of the play as well as primary sources.

The writer B. Rivkin (Borukh Avrom Weinrebe, 1883–1945) is known to scholars today as an important anarchist thinker and Yiddish literary critic. Less known is that Rivkin was also a firm believer in the occult who attended spiritualist séances and speculated about the possibility of telepathic communication.

Alex Weiser discusses the oral tradition of Jewish songs in the Yiddish language, a musical genre well-represented in YIVO’s archival and library holdings.

In this lecture, Dr. Paula Ansaldo will explore the development of the South American Yiddish theatre scene and the connections it established with the main Yiddish cultural centers of the time in the U.S. and Europe and with the larger theatrical ecosystem of South America.

This lecture will follow the careers of Yiddish actresses to illuminate shifting attitudes within society and the Yiddish theater regarding gender.