Miriam Isaacs holds a doctorate in linguistics from Cornell University. She has published on Yiddish culture and literature and taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her scholarly work has been in the field of sociolinguistics, on language and culture and language maintenance. She has published on Hasidic Yiddish, on Yiddish literature in translation. She has taught internationally. Born in a DP camp in Germany, and raised in Montreal and Brooklyn, she is a native speaker of Yiddish with language skills in English, French, German, Modern Hebrew and Russian.
Her important research and publishing has been on the question of language loyalty in the Displaced Persons Camps. She has also researched an important music archive. The Stonehill collection of 1948 –postwar songs. She has held a Fulbright Fellowship in Sweden and Fellowships at the US Holocaust Museum and the National Yiddish Book Center. Most importantly, Miriam Isaacs has taught Yiddish in many venues, at university level and in adult contexts. She has lectured and taught in Sweden, Czech Republic, Israel, Lithuania, and Germany.
