Cooking from Yiddish Recipe Books

Tuition: $200 | YIVO members: $150**

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, 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 any readings will be in Yiddish.

Instructor: Eve Jochnowitz

This course, conducted entirely in Yiddish, will concentrate on fresh, original, and health-supportive preparations selected from Yiddish cookbooks published over the last two centuries. We will examine the development of the recipe as a Yiddish literary genre and gain hands-on skills in preparing recipes, some familiar and comforting, others unique and surprising. Learn to make traditional and innovative Ashkenazic feasts that are vividly flavored and nourishing to the body and soul.

Students will receive a list of ingredients before each session and will be able to cook along in real time.

Yiddish Level:
While this course will be conducted in Yiddish, it is designed for advanced beginners. It is appropriate for those who have taken the equivalent of level Beys or above in the YIVO Summer Program. It is also appropriate for those who completed Beginner IV Yiddish, Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish, or above in fall 2021.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials (including ingredient lists) digitally throughout the class on Canvas. If students wish to cook along during each session, they will be responsible for acquiring the ingredients themselves.

Eve Jochnowitz, Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute and the Workmen’s Circle, is an institute fellow at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Jochnowitz has been teaching Yiddish language, culture, and literature, as well as Yiddish foodways and dance, for 25 years. She worked for several years as a cook and baker in New York and received her Ph.D. from the department of Performance Studies at New York University. She has lectured both in the United States and abroad on food in Jewish tradition, religion, and ritual, as well as on food in Yiddish performance and popular culture. The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (Fania Lewando’s Vegetarish-dietisher kokhbukh) translated, annotated, and adapted for the modern kitchen, was published in 2015.

**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.