Pedagogy

Reflections on the teaching and learning of Yiddish, as well as downloadable guides, exercises, and lesson plans to use in the classroom.

Pedagogy

Antifascist Yiddish for Beginners

Saper’s course, Antifas­cist Yid­dish for Begin­ners,” grew explic­it­ly out of their per­son­al, polit­i­cal, and artis­tic com­mit­ments and was cre­at­ed for the com­mu­ni­ty they call home: an inter­gen­er­a­tional group of artists and activists, most­ly queer and trans left­ist Jews.

Pedagogy

My Way into Yiddish: Reflections of an Adult Learner

Lau­rie Fish­er, a Jew­ish Stud­ies pro­fes­sor who hap­pens to be a stu­dent of Yid­dish, reflects on her expe­ri­ences as some­one who came to learn­ing Yid­dish lat­er in life.

Pedagogy

A Conversation at ASEEES: Teaching Yiddish during the War in Ukraine

At the 2022 Asso­ci­a­tion for Slav­ic, East Euro­pean, and Eurasian Stud­ies (ASEEES) con­fer­ence this fall, a group of Yid­dish instruc­tors came togeth­er to dis­cuss the par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges of teach­ing Yid­dish lan­guage dur­ing the war in Ukraine.

Pedagogy

The Voices of Yiddish Writers: A Bilingual Conversation on the new Bilingual Edition of Sheva Zucker's Collection of Printed and Recorded Yiddish Writing, The Golden Peacock

Miri­am Isaacs and She­va Zuck­er dis­cuss Zuk­er’s project, The Gold­en Pea­cock: The Voice of the Yid­dish Writer Bilin­gual, a book and record­ing fea­tur­ing twelve Yid­dish writ­ers read­ing from their poet­ry and prose, accom­pa­nied by an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of each work. 

Pedagogy

The Golden Peacock and the Green Owl: Analyzing Yiddish Language Learners’ Experiences with Duolingo

This arti­cle sum­ma­rizes the find­ings of a poll of three-hun­dred stu­dents who study Yid­dish with Duolingo.

Pedagogy

Let's not wait!: Introducing preschoolers to Yiddish through Leah Hoffman's Alefbeys

In this piece Beth Dwoskin explains how Leah Hoff­man’s play about the Yid­dish alpha­bet can be adapt­ed for chil­dren’s class­es today. She presents her Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the play along­side a record­ing of the alef­beys song in English.

Pedagogy

Illustrating Ya’akov Fichmann’s Shabes in vald

In this piece Gio­van­na Truong dis­cuss­es her cre­ative process of illus­trat­ing Ya’akov Fich­man­n’s short sto­ry Shabes in vald for a final assign­ment in an inter­me­di­ate Yid­dish lan­guage class.

Pedagogy

Translating a Text on Racist Violence as a Yiddish Student

As a final project in a course on Read­ing Yid­dish” at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Gio­van­na Truong took on the chal­lenge of trans­lat­ing Aaron Meisel’s The Death of Ted Dennis.”

Pedagogy

Final Projects

These projects demon­strate not only how clever and cre­ative stu­dents can be, but also the vari­ety of ways that stu­dents can express and dis­play their thought and learning.

Pedagogy

The Comet at the End of the World: An Online, Immersive, Conversational Lesson Plan about “Current Events” Using Digitized Yiddish Press Materials

Ri Turn­er shares the mate­ri­als from a ses­sion for inter­me­di­ate stu­dents over Zoon on astron­o­my reportage in the Yid­dish press, which can serve as an exam­ple of how to iden­ti­fy dig­i­tized his­tor­i­cal Yid­dish mate­ri­als around a par­tic­u­lar theme, repack­age them in a for­mat that is acces­si­ble to inter­me­di­ate stu­dents, and use them in an online teach­ing con­text to gen­er­ate a con­ver­sa­tion that is both his­tor­i­cal­ly root­ed and con­tem­porar­i­ly relevant.

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