Beginner Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners
Tuition: $480 | YIVO members: $375**
Students: $240 (Must register with valid university email address)
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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 and English.
Instructor: Malena Chinski
Who should take this course?
This course is appropriate for students with some basic familiarity with spoken Yiddish.
What topics will this class cover?
In this class, students will strengthen and expand their Yiddish linguistic and cultural heritage. With the teacher’s close guidance, and the support of visual materials and listening practice, students will be encouraged to communicate among themselves in Yiddish as much as possible. Conversation topics will cover daily life, as well as Shabbos and Jewish holidays. Communicational goals and vocabulary will include greetings and asking for news, expressions of politeness, giving advice and command, and talking about the family, among others. Grammar points intended to improve communicational skills will include conjugations in the present tense and the imperative, articles, personal pronouns, and numerals. We will also engage with additional folklore materials, such as Yiddish songs, proverbs, jokes, and riddles.
Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
No, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is not required. All written texts provided will be transliterated into Latin characters (and the focus of the course will be conversation as opposed to reading and writing).
Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally on Canvas.
Malena Chinski is a PhD in Social Sciences from the National University of General Sarmiento, in Argentina. Her doctoral dissertation addressed Shoah commemoration within the Jewish community of Buenos Aires during the first postwar decade. She completed a postdoctoral stay in France at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales with support from the Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah. Her current research addresses the reconstruction of Yiddish culture in Paris in the immediate postwar period, the itineraries of surviving Yiddish writers and scholars from Eastern Europe, and memories of the Shoah in the Parisian Yiddish press. She has published research articles in various specialized journals and collective volumes and co-edited with Alan Astro the collective volume Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America (Leiden, Brill, 2018).
Malena studied Yiddish at the IWO Foundation of Buenos Aires with professors Ester Szwarc and Avrom Lichtenbaum. She has taught beginner and intermediate classes at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature in Berlin. Currently, she teaches regular Yiddish classes in the virtual programs of YIVO and the Maison de la culture yiddish.
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