Intensive Intermediate III&IV Yiddish

Tuition: $850 | YIVO members: $675**
Students: $425 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in Yiddish.

Instructor: Reb Noyekh (Noah Barrera)

Who should take this course?
This course is for those who have taken two semesters of Yiddish. It is appropriate for those who took Intermediate II Yiddish or Intensive Intermediate I&II Yiddish in spring 2023.

What topics will this class cover?
Students will continue acquiring intermediate speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in this intensive course. They will strengthen the foundation set in the intensive beginner course (based on Colloquial Yiddish) through regular grammatical and conversational exercise. This course will be taught entirely in Yiddish and will cover chapters 4-8 of David Goldberg’s all-Yiddish workbook Yidish af yidish. These chapters primarily focus on the special nature and usage of Yiddish nouns, gender and suffixes, as well as diminutives, pronouns, adjectives and prepositions. Students will finish the last three chapters of Dos kluge shnayderl (chapters 7-9) on their own. They are expected to write three book reports in which they summarize each chapter and identify examples of the grammar covered in the course. They will also be expected to collectively (as a class) retell these chapters in their own words. Further, students will work in and outside of class on the first chapter of Motl Peyse Dem Khazns by Sholem Aleykhem (pp. 1-29). This edition (Zucker, 2017) is abridged and adapted for students. Each chapter is divided into smaller sections that are accompanied by exercises, which test for comprehension.

Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
Yes, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is required.

Course Materials:
This course will use the textbook Yidish af yidish by David Goldberg (Purchase), including its multimedia website component. We will also be using Dos kluge shnayderl (Purchase) and Motl peyse dem khazns by Sholem-Aleichem (Purchase). Additional materials, homework assignments as well as class video recordings will be on Canvas.

Also recommended are Colloquial Yiddish by Lilly Kahn (Purchase) and Basic Yiddish by Rebecca Margolis (Purchase).

Reb Noyekh is a Yiddish educator, writer, translator, and content creator. A native of California, he began learning Yiddish more than 10 years ago at UC Santa Cruz where he majored in Jewish Studies. He later studied and taught in the YIVO zumer program for several years and coordinated and taught Yiddish language classes at Der Arbeter Ring in New York. As a writer, his articles and original stories have appeared in the Forverts, Afn Shvel, Yiddish Branzhe, and elsewhere. He is preparing a book of his original short stories titled “Di feygelekh fun honolulu un andere mayses” [The Birds of Honolulu and other Stories]. Reb Noyekh is an accomplished translator. His academic translation, with Nathaniel Deutsch, of The Lost World of Russia’s Jews, was released in 2021 by Indiana University Press. Reb Noyekh is also a prolific content creator on both TikTok and YouTube, and recently launched an all-Yiddish podcast, Mit layb un lebn.

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