Zuntik Bulbes (Sunday Potatoes)

Class starts Jan 11 4:00pm-5:30pm

Tuition: $165 | YIVO members: $125**

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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 accessible in Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website.

Instructor: Eve Jochnowitz

Zuntik bulbes (Sunday Potatoes) is a Yiddish folksong familiar to many. It rues the limited resources available to Jews in Eastern Europe, where potatoes were a reliable staple through the long winters. Indeed, the Yiddish language has at least 13 documented words for potato.

This course, conducted entirely in Yiddish, will explore the many faces and flavors of potatoes in Yiddish literature, art, and traditional and contemporary recipes.

Students will have the option to cook along in real time during class. Students will receive a list of ingredients before each session.

Yiddish Level:
While this course will be conducted in Yiddish, it is designed for advanced-beginner and lower-intermediate Yiddish students. It is suitable for advanced-beginner Yiddish students, such as those who took Beginner IV Yiddish (Sunday, Monday, or Thursday) or Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish in the fall 2022 semester. It is also suitable for lower-intermediate Yiddish students, such as those who took Intermediate I Yiddish (Sunday or Monday), Intermediate II Yiddish, or  Intensive Intermediate I&II Yiddish in the fall 2022 semester.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas. If students wish to cook along during a session, they will be responsible for acquiring the ingredients themselves. Students will be able to access the list of ingredients in Canvas before each session for this purpose.


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.