YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization Now in Its Fourth Year

From January 5-January 23, 2015, a diverse range of students flocked to YIVO to take advantage of a rare opportunity to study the culture, history, language, and literature of East European Jews with some of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish Studies. The courses in the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization (inaugurated in 2011) offer something different than the usual survey course in a university or adult education program: a chance to explore in detail fascinating aspects of this world.

Highlights of the program included:

Mapping Jewish New York

Rakhmiel Peltz, YIVO’s inaugural Atran Visiting Professor in Yiddish Language and Linguistics, taught a class on New York’s Jewish neighborhoods entitled, “A Feeling for Place.” In this class, students read and discussed the works of Barbara Myerhoff, Jack Kugelmass, and others who created rich ethnographic portraits of dynamic Jewish communities and their change over time. The students then chose subjects to interview about specific New York Jewish neighborhoods, from the Lower East Side to the Bronx and to Sheepshead Bay; students then presented these mini-ethnographies to the class on the last day. As Prof. Peltz noted, the largely unwritten local traditions of Jews in New York, and worldwide form just as important a part of the Jewish experience as do the ancient, written aspects of Jewish tradition. By looking at the local, the unrecorded, and ephemeral aspects of Jewish daily life, scholars and students can learn much about the ways that Jewish languages and cultures have continued to develop through time, in such a variety of contexts and conditions.

Isaac Bleaman presents his case study of the Lower East Side.

Prof. Miriam Udel

Prof. Miriam Udel of Emory University (who certainly had the longest commute to class) traveled from Atlanta on three successive Friday mornings to lead her course, “Honey on the Page: Yiddish Children’s Literature and Yiddish Culture.” Prof. Udel, who is currently preparing a translated anthology of Yiddish children’s literature, led readings and discussions about stories featuring magic lions, Communist dogs, and shabes for socialists, among other topics. She will be helping YIVO plan upcoming programs devoted to materials related to children, including an exhibit featuring YIVO’s extensive collection of rare Yiddish children’s literature, particularly of the Soviet period.

Other popular Winter Program classes included Gennady Estraikh’s class on Abraham Cahan and the Yiddish Forward; Elissa Bemporad’s class “World of Our Mothers,” about East European Jewish women’s history; Sam Kassow’s class on Yiddish culture during World War II; Magda Teter’s class on Jewish-Catholic relations before and after Vatican II; Curt Leviant’s class on Avraham Reisen and the art of the Yiddish short story; and Cecile Kuznitz’s class on YIVO and the making of the modern Yiddish nation.

Keep an eye out for details about next year’s Winter Program, and please join us for our diverse set of classes and public programs featuring these professors and others who will be joining us in the near future. If you don’t live in the New York area but would like to participate in some of our programs, please be in touch! We may have online educational opportunities available in the coming year. For more information about YIVO’s educational programs, please contact Jennifer Young, YIVO’s Director of Education: jyoung@yivo.cjh.org | (917) 606-8290