Yidish in ale lender! Harvard’s Campaign for Yiddish
Pedagogy

Yidish in ale lender! Harvard’s Campaign for Yiddish

Saul Noam Zaritt

Oct 14, 2015

It is unfortunately a common refrain among teachers of Yiddish: how do we get more students to take first-year Yiddish courses? As the great “crisis of the Humanities” spreads across university campuses, there is increasing competition among departments to try and snatch up as many students as possible while eager administrators watch, looking to cut funding to departments and programs with low enrollments.

So Yiddish instructors, like everyone else, have had to come up with ways to make Yiddish sexy, relevant, and enticing to the dwindling number undergraduate and graduate students in the Humanities and to regular college students with language requirements to fulfill

There are many strategies out there, from appealing to mythologies of Yiddish humor or Yiddish radicalism to indulging in (or upending) various forms of Yiddish nostalgia. A recent ad campaign by Yuri Vedenyapin, Harvard’s Yiddish preceptor, caught our eye.

Vedenyapin wrote (or commissioned from former students!) advertisements for his Yiddish classes in Romanian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and Russian. The idea was to catch the attentions of native speakers or students of these languages and explain the importance of Yiddish and Yiddish culture in understanding Eastern Europe. The Romanian ad talks of mamaliga and Itzik Manger; the German ad mentions the birth of Yiddish in German speaking lands; speakers of Polish are encouraged to discover eight hundred years of Jewish history in Poland; the Ukrainian and Hungarian ads recall the beginning of Hasidism; and the Russian ad describes the intimate connection between the two languages.

<p>From the Pol­ish: Take a&nbsp;course in Yid­dish and gain invalu­able knowl­edge on the more than <span class="numbers">800</span>&nbsp;year his­to­ry of Pol­ish Jew­ish&nbsp;culture!</p>

From the Pol­ish: Take a course in Yid­dish and gain invalu­able knowl­edge on the more than 800 year his­to­ry of Pol­ish Jew­ish culture!

<p>From the Roman­ian: From the famous song <span class="push-single"></span>​<span class="pull-single">‘</span>Oy Rumenye, <span class="push-single"></span>​<span class="pull-single">‘</span>prais­ing the taste of polen­ta and cheese and the taste of Roman­ian wine to one of the most impor­tant Yid­dish poets, Itzik Manger, a&nbsp;roman­tic trou­ba­dour from&nbsp;Iasi…</p>

From the Roman­ian: From the famous song ​‘Oy Rumenye, ​‘prais­ing the taste of polen­ta and cheese and the taste of Roman­ian wine to one of the most impor­tant Yid­dish poets, Itzik Manger, a roman­tic trou­ba­dour from Iasi…

<p>From the Ukrain­ian: From lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics to Hasidic mys­ti­cism, you will dis­cov­er an array of mate­r­i­al that will enrich your under­stand­ing of the past and present of&nbsp;Ukraine…</p>

From the Ukrain­ian: From lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics to Hasidic mys­ti­cism, you will dis­cov­er an array of mate­r­i­al that will enrich your under­stand­ing of the past and present of Ukraine…

<p>From the Russ­ian: Yid­dish is not only the song <span class="push-double"></span>​<span class="pull-double">“</span>Bal­alai­ka Tum” or <span class="push-double"></span>​<span class="pull-double">“</span>Tevye the Milk­man” by Sholem Ale­ichem or slang words <span class="push-double"></span>​<span class="pull-double">“</span>ksi­va” and <span class="push-double"></span>​<span class="pull-double">“</span>Hochma.” Yid­dish is also many more writ­ers, songs,newspapers and doc­u­ments. Yid­dish can be a&nbsp;key to the very dis­tant and very recent&nbsp;past!]</p>

From the Russ­ian: Yid­dish is not only the song ​“Bal­alai­ka Tum” or ​“Tevye the Milk­man” by Sholem Ale­ichem or slang words ​“ksi­va” and ​“Hochma.” Yid­dish is also many more writ­ers, songs,newspapers and doc­u­ments. Yid­dish can be a key to the very dis­tant and very recent past!]

<p>From the Ger­man: Expand your knowl­edge of Yid­dish and it will open doors to the rich cul­tur­al her­itage of Ashke­naz­ic Jew­ry, with ori­gins in Speier, Worms and Mainz in the Mid­dle&nbsp;Ages…</p>

From the Ger­man: Expand your knowl­edge of Yid­dish and it will open doors to the rich cul­tur­al her­itage of Ashke­naz­ic Jew­ry, with ori­gins in Speier, Worms and Mainz in the Mid­dle Ages…

<p>From the Hun­gar­i­an: From mod­ern lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics to Has­sidic mys­ti­cism, you’ll dis­cov­er a&nbsp;wealth of mate­r­i­al that will enrich your under­stand­ing of Hungary’s past and present and reveal new excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of research and artis­tic&nbsp;creativity.</p>

From the Hun­gar­i­an: From mod­ern lit­er­a­ture and pol­i­tics to Has­sidic mys­ti­cism, you’ll dis­cov­er a wealth of mate­r­i­al that will enrich your under­stand­ing of Hungary’s past and present and reveal new excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of research and artis­tic creativity.

Pedagogy
Yiddish Courses
yidn in ale lender redn yidish
multilingualism
MLA STYLE
Zaritt, Saul Noam. “Yidish in ale lender! Harvard’s Campaign for Yiddish.” In geveb, October 2015: https://ingeveb.org/pedagogy/yidish-in-ale-lender-harvards-campaign-for-yiddish.
CHICAGO STYLE
Zaritt, Saul Noam. “Yidish in ale lender! Harvard’s Campaign for Yiddish.” In geveb (October 2015): Accessed Apr 24, 2024.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Saul Noam Zaritt

Saul Noam Zaritt is an associate professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard University. He is currently a peer review editor at In geveb and one of the site's founding editors.

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