Intensive Intermediate I&II Yiddish

Class starts Feb 23 6:00pm-7:30pm

Tuition: $850 | YIVO members: $675**
Students: $425 (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.

Instructor: Reb Noyekh (Noah Barrera)

Who should take this course?
This course is appropriate for those who took Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish in fall 2022.

What topics will this class cover?
Students will acquire intermediate speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills in this intensive course. They will strengthen the foundation set in the intensive beginner course through regular grammatical and conversational exercise. This course will be taught entirely in Yiddish and will make use of David Goldberg’s all-Yiddish workbook Yidish af yidish. It will primarily focus on the Yiddish verb, with particular attention placed on the past tense (the most analytical of tenses). Students will continue reading Dos kluge shnayderl (chapters 3-9) from the Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish course. They are expected to write at least four book reports in which they summarize each chapter and identify examples of the grammar covered in the course. As a class, the students will retell these chapters in their own words “Af eyn fus” (like Rabbi Hillel did “on one foot,” so to speak).

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

Course Materials:

Yidish af yidish by David Goldberg (Yale University Press, 1996) (Purchase)
The Clever Little Tailor by Solomon Simon (Purchase)

Recommended:

Colloquial Yiddish by Lily Kahn (Purchase). The audio files for the textbook are available free of charge on the publisher's website.
Bochner/Beinfeld, Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (verterbukh.org)

Any additional materials will be provided by the instructor via Canvas.

Questions? Read our 2023 Spring Classes FAQ.

Reb Noyekh is a Yiddish educator, writer, translator, and YouTube content creator. A native of California, he began learning Yiddish 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. His articles and original stories have appeared in the Yiddish Daily Forverts, Afn Shvel, and elsewhere. His academic translation, together with Nathaniel Deutsch, of Abraham Rechtman's ethnographic account of the Ansky expedition, will soon be published by Indiana University Press. Reb Noyekh is also a prolific YouTube content creator; together with his partner Gustavo Emos, he has created over 100 hours of Yiddish content on YouTube.

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