Beginner III Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners (Morning)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in Yiddish and English.

Instructor: Mikhl Yashinsky

Who should take this course?
This course is a continuation of Beginner II Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners, held by YIVO in spring 2021. Students who have previously taken two beginner conversational Yiddish classes at another institution may also take this course.

What topics will this class cover?
We will have lively shmues as we put into practice the words of the Yiddish adage — lern afn kol, vet blaybn ale mol (learn out loud, and it will stay with you forever)! Introduction of new grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary will be integrated into and used as a tool for our ongoing discussions. Students will also have the opportunity to guide the learning by sharing with the instructor and fellow students what elements of Yiddish conversation and culture they might be interested in exploring further.

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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