Search results

This broadcast from February 21, 1965 presents excerpts from two papers delivered at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before: 1. "Variety of Functions of the Yiddish Adjective," a paper delivered by Professor Uriel Weinreich at a session of the Linguistic Circle, about certain cases of the ...

This is the third post in a series about alumni of YIVO’s intensive summer program in Yiddish, offered by YIVO and Bard College. The program, which was established in 1968, is in its 47th year. This year’s session runs from June 23 – August 1, 2014. 

This is the second post in a series about alumni of YIVO’s intensive summer program in Yiddish, offered by YIVO and Bard College. The program, which was established in 1968, is in its 47th year. This year’s session runs from June 23 – August 1, 2014. How I Invented My Own ...

by JENNIFER YOUNG

Every summer since 1968, YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Summer Program has welcomed students of all ages and backgrounds to New York City, united in the common goal of immersing themselves in Yiddish language, literature, and culture. Our 38 students this year come from places such as France; China; and Boro Park, Brooklyn; as well as from Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel, and range in age from 17 to 74. This year, for the first time, the program is being held right here at YIVO, giving students even more opportunity to get to know YIVO, and for us to get to know them.

We began this past week by welcoming just our Elementary class, helping to ease the transition from their languages of daily use to a complete Yiddish immersion. One student told me that her teacher had assured her that within a few weeks, she would be dreaming in Yiddish. “Dreaming in Yiddish, can you imagine?” the student said to me. “Right now I’m just dreaming of dreaming in Yiddish!” Our faculty for the Elementary classes include Paula Teitelbaum, a native Yiddish speaker from Poland and a veteran YIVO Yiddish teacher; Sarah Ponichtera, a 2004 graduate of the summer program who now works as an archivist at the Center for Jewish History; and Eve Jochnowitz, also an alum, who runs our Elementary Yiddish classes during the year. Sheva Zucker, also a senior YIVO faculty member, joins us this year as academic advisor, meeting with the students individually and helping to tailor the program to match their needs.

This is the first of series about alumni of YIVO’s intensive summer program in Yiddish, offered by YIVO and Bard College. The program, which was established in 1968, is in its 47th year. This year’s session runs from June 23 – August 1, 2014. 

In this broadcast from January 24, 1965, we hear the paper on Yiddish literature that Dr. Mikhl (Michael) Astour delivered not long before at YIVO’ annual conference: "One Hundred Years of Yiddish Literature: From Mendele's Little Man to Date." As the report on the conference in Yedies noted: Professor Michael Astour surveyed ...

Say you're a woman living in a shtetl in 1900: what do you say in a letter to your husband in America if you think he's cheating on you? What about to your son to express your disapproval of how he's been letting his schoolwork slide in favor of hanging out with a bad crowd? Or how about to a friend to express your shock over the fact that you've heard he has a Christmas tree in his Jewish home?

These are sort of letters that Alice Nakhimovsky and Roberta Newman translated for their book Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America (Indiana University Press, 2014) and which they will present at YIVO on June 17, 2014 at 7:00pm. If you were a Jew in Russia or Poland or a new Jewish immigrant to America in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century and facing these and other dilemmas, you might find yourself turning for help to a brivnshteler, a Yiddish letter manual.

by LEAH FALK

Traduttore, traditore, goes the Italian proverb: to translate is to betray. But at YIVO, the opposite seems true. Six recipients of the Yiddish Book Center’s 2014 Translation Fellowships are fiercely loyal YIVO Max Weinreich Center alumni. The fellows include Beata Kasiarz, Helen Mintz, Sarah Ponichtera, Sasha Senderovich, Anna Torres, and Ri Turner.

Karolina Szymaniak The recipient of YIVO’s Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Fellowship for 2013-2014, Karolina Szymaniak, is an Assistant Professor at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where she also heads the Yiddish Culture Lab. Having earned her Ph.D. in literary and cultural studies from the Jagiellonian University in Kazimierz, Poland, she ...

by SARAH PONICHTERA

Yiddish – an Eastern European visitor that arrived on these shores at the turn of the twentieth century – has made a home in America like no other. Yiddish has become a part of the English language, contributing flavorful words like shmooze, kvetch, and shlep. However, the embrace in which Yiddish has been enveloped can be so tight as to threaten its own vitality as a distinct language, with its own grammar, literature, and historical specificity.