Intermediate I Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners (Morning)

Tuition: $225 | YIVO members: $175
Students: $112 (Must register with valid university email address)

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, assignments, 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 primarily for those who took Beginner IV Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners in spring 2022. Those who have taken conversational courses at other institutions, or otherwise feel comfortable conversing in Yiddish with a group on a basic level, are also encouraged to register.

What topics will this class cover?
This course will focus on useful Yiddish idioms and turns of phrase that will likely not be known to all speakers of the language at this level, but which will prove endlessly handy to those who learn them. Through lively discussion and lighthearted in-class activities, students will learn such idioms and the proper way to incorporate them into conversations. The class is designed to get students talking and bring their speech to a more idiomatic and yidishlekh level.

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:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

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