Intermediate I Yiddish

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: Karolina Szymaniak

Who should take this course?
This course is appropriate for those who have completed Beginner IV Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

What topics will this class cover?
This course will develop skills in reading, speaking, listening, and writing Yiddish for lower intermediate students. Students will learn with the help of both historical and contemporary materials, including songs and film excerpts. The class will broaden the scope of students’ vocabulary and structures. Grammatical topics will include a review of declensions of articles, adjectives, and pronouns, and will introduce the dative case. We will work on the past tense and learn new syntax structures. Vocabulary topics will include food, activities in town, and telling time. The class will work with the textbook In eynem, beginning with chapters 13 through 17. The communicative approach of In eynem will be complemented by a more structural approach to learning grammar.

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

Course Materials:
This course will use the textbook In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook, Vol I & II by Asya Vaisman Schulman, Jordan Brown, Mikhl Yashinsky (Purchase).

Karolina Szymaniak is assistant professor of Yiddish at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Her research interests range across modern Yiddish literature, Polish-Jewish cultural relations, and translation studies. She is also co-founder of the Jewish Arts Institute/Yidisher Kunst-Institut, and co-editor-in-chief of East European Jewish Affairs. In addition to having taught Yiddish language and culture throughout Europe, she has also served as a consultant for the POLIN Museum in Warsaw and the Museum of Modern Art in Łódz. Her recent publications include Montages. Debora Vogel and the New Legend of the City and My wild goat. Anthology of women Yiddish poets (in Polish) and Hasidic Steam Engine and Other stories. Anthology of Yiddish short stories, 16th-21st centuries (in Polish). She is also the editor of Rachel Auerbach's ghetto writings, which received the 2016 Polityka History Award. Her new edition of Auerbach’s wartime and postwar writing was published in French in 2025.

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