Beginner II Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners (Afternoon)

Instructor: Mikhl Yashinsky

Who should take this course?
This course is a continuation of Beginner Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners, held by YIVO in fall 2020. Students who have previously taken one beginner conversational Yiddish class at another institution are also welcome to take this course.

What topics will this class cover?
This class will cover building blocks of Yiddish conversation and culture, including ways to describe our families, homes, holidays, and the people and places, sights and sounds, that form the tapestry of our lives — together with communicative introduction of those grammatical topics needed to hold such conversations.

Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
No, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is not required. 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).

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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