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Yiddish Language and Culture Courses 

SPRING 2027

YIDD 102  Yiddish II     
Gina Glasman  |  MWF 11:00am -12:00pm  |  WL1, O, FYA  | 
Cross listed: YIDD 502, JUST 180A, EEES 181D, GERM 281J, RUSS 280A

Follows on from Yiddish 101 as students sharpen their linguistic skills with more complex sentence structure, a deeper knowledge of tenses and cases, and a broader vocabulary. In addition, we explore Yiddish culture through film, stories, folk sayings and the occasional joke! As always lyrics from Yiddish popular song provide the backbone of the class, and individual attention is a feature of the instruction. Note: interested students can join 102 directly without having taken 101. (Instructor permission needed.)

YIDD 280A  The Story of Yiddish Cinema 
Gina Glasman  |  TR 5:00-6:30pm  |  A, C, FYA  |  Cross listed: JUST 284A, CINE 285K, EEES 280B, GERM 281D, RUSS 280D

Yiddish cinema had its start in the silent movie era of the early twentieth century. Today, a movie with any Yiddish content is a rarity. But in between then and now, Yiddish cinema had a golden age, built upon the cultural appetites of the Jewish Eastern European heartlands, and its Yiddish-speaking, immigrant reinventions in New York City and beyond. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this class will examine aspects of this ethnic film scene, and what it once meant (and even now means) to speak Yiddish in the “language” of cinema.

YIDD 354  Modern Yiddish Culture
Gina Glasman  |  TR 1:30-3:00pm  |  H, J  |  Cross listed: JUST 354, GERM 380K, RUSS 381D, EEES 354

In the half century before the Second World War, a Yiddish ­speaking "Jewish Street" stretched from Buenos Aires to Boston, from London to Lodz, with many cities in between. What characterized the culture of this mostly urban and modernizing society is the subject of this class. Cinema and short stories, poetry and politics provide our vehicle to explore the world of Eastern European Jewry in a time of radical transformation and approaching catastrophe (all material is in English). Note: If a student has already taken a 200-level version of Modern Yiddish Culture they will not receive credit for this course.

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OTHER COURSES

YIDD 100 mini-course   A Fast Track to Basic Yiddish
A mini‐course that provides a rapid‐fire immersion in the basics of conversational Yiddish through "shmoozing" and song.

YIDD 101  Yiddish I  |  WL1, O, GL, FYA  
This is an introductory language class. We start from scratch and no prior knowledge or familiarity of any sort is assumed. Students learn simple conversational Yiddish and how to read and write, beginning with the alphabet. This foundation course is also meant as an entry-way into aspects of Yiddish-speaking cultures, past and present, and uses language themed instruction as a means to that end. Among the wide variety of topics that we consider: the phenomenon of Yiddish calques (aka Yinglish or Yiddish inflected speech in English); folk idioms, including street-wise Yiddish with its famous cursing talent, and Yiddish song (a rich musical repertoire born in Jewish Eastern Europe, which now has a home in the contemporary klezmer scene). Through all these mechanisms, students walk away from 101 with a foundational knowledge of Yiddish as a once vital, and still enduring linguistic and cultural phenomenon.

YIDD 203  Yiddish III  |  WL3
An intermediate level language class. Students will build upon the foundation of introductory Yiddish (101-102) to deepen their understanding of conversational and literary Yiddish. Idiomatic speech and Yiddish syntax will provide a particular focus of class. Song, poetry and prose will again supplement our study, as students continue to enrich their knowledge of Yiddish language and culture. Yiddish 102 is required or with permission from the instructor.

YIDD 351  Jewish New York  |  D, H, T, W  
A study of ethnic, urban, and material history with a focus on Yiddish speaking, Eastern European immigrant society, and the story of its arrival into America’s signature metropolis at the turn of the twentieth century. With this broad canvas in mind, we will tackle themes that have a particular as well as universal resonance, such as the collective imagining of home for those who are newly displaced, and of newer identities embraced with the abandonment of the old. To wrap our minds around this historical purpose, we will turn to an eclectic mix of sources: literature and film, urban architecture and everyday objects will become our tools to excavate an emergent “New York-ish” world in all its distinctive detail. 

YIDD 371  The Ghetto, The Jews, & the City​  |  A, C
European Jewry has often been a quintessentially urban society and culture, both by way of reputation, and as a matter of fact. Our class will explore this urban personality across time and space, beginning with the mandated pre-modern ghettos of central and southern Europe and ending with the ethnically rooted neighbourhoods of Vienna and Paris, Berlin and London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Along the way, we will consider related themes, including civic & minority identity, the nature of toleration, and the place of the city within broader society. When possible, we will ground our conversation in contemporary material culture, including urban landmarks, post-cards and various kinds of visual media.

YIDD 380A  Shtetl Photography  |  C, H
We Were This Once: Shtetl Photography, Family Memory and Ethnic Self-Representation

The advent of accessible and affordable forms of photographic technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has transformed the ways that people record and remember their own lives.  In quick measure, vernacular forms of photography, such as the formal studio picture, or the “selfie,” graced the walls of ordinary homes or were pasted into family albums.  These repositories of private memory will be the focus of our study in class, as we think through the implications of this once novel cultural artifact, and its transformative effect on individual and collective notions of visual self-representation.  With this last theme in mind, we will also consider the broader cultural and social history of photography in relation to Yiddish (Jewish Eastern European) and other comparable urban minority societies, especially from an American perspective.

YIDD 397 & YIDD 497 - Independent Study
Individual research under the supervision of a faculty member. Prerequisites: consent of instructor and approval by the Judaic Studies Director of Undergraduate Studies or the Chair. Variable credits.