The Recipe: A Yiddish Literary Genre

Class starts Jan 3 4:00pm-5:30pm

Tuition: $240 | YIVO members: $180**

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

Recipes, until recently neglected by literary scholars and historians, constitute the earliest and largest body of women’s literature in many languages. Recipes in Yiddish are of particular interest to anyone exploring the Yiddish word for their documentation of language, kashrut observance, kitchen technologies, market conditions, and the texture of everyday life for their writers and readers.

Writers of Yiddish recipes convey descriptive as well as prescriptive agendas for greater or lesser religious observance, for enhancing the sophistication and embourgeoisement of Jewish housewives, for vegetarianism or other dietary ideologies, or to promote their commercial products.

This course, conducted entirely in Yiddish, will follow the development of the Yiddish recipe in written form with special attention to the tastes and culinary practices of the Yiddish world.

Yiddish Level:
This course, conducted in Yiddish, is designed for upper-beginner and lower-intermediate Yiddish students, such as those who have taken Beginner IV Yiddish (Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday) or Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish in the Fall 2023 semester. It is also suitable for lower-intermediate Yiddish students, such as those who have taken Intermediate I Yiddish (Sunday or Friday),& Intermediate II Yiddish, or Intensive Intermediate I&II Yiddish in the Fall 2023 semester, and all higher level classes.

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

Questions? Read our 2024 Winter Yiddish Seminars FAQ.

Eve Jochnowitz, Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute and the Workers 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.