NOTE: All information from the folkhögskola will be sent in Swedish.
YIDDISH FOR BEGINNERS (TERM 4)
Learning Yiddish is an opportunity to connect with this rich Eastern European Jewish language and culture with its beautiful music and literature. This is a treasure trove that is just waiting to be discovered!
We are going to use the following textbook for our classes: “Yiddish, Volume 1” (Sheva Zucker, New York: Workmen’s Circle, 1994), and we will start towards the end of this textbook. We will continue working on the past tense and learn the future tense. We will cover topics such as food and work, as well as the festivals of Purim and Peysakh.
On finishing the first volume of our textbook, we will make a start on the second volume: “Yiddish, Volume 2” (Sheva Zucker, New York: Workmen’s Circle, 2002).
The course is given in English, in collaboration with International Yiddish Center, Paideia – the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden and Jiddischsällskapet i Stockholm.
Course structure
Students will be expected to spend some time every week to work on their reading and writing, to learn the vocabulary and to revise the grammar covered in each class. We will start each session with some Yiddish conversation. Then we will revise some of the grammar and vocabulary learned in the previous lesson. After that, we will work with our Yiddish textbook, read the reading material, the dialogues and the jokes there, learn new vocabulary and grammar and do some of the exercises in the book. And we will conclude every lesson with a Yiddish song.
Prior knowledge
To apply for this course, you need basic computer skills and knowledge of how to use the digital platform Zoom. The school offers Zoom manuals and a training opportunity before the start of the course. Please also see the information below under “Course level”.
Course level
This course is a continuation of the three previous Yiddish Beginners’ courses at Paideia folkhögskola. Students at a similar level of Yiddish would be most welcome to join this class. The course is designed for students with basic knowledge of Yiddish, who are able to form sentences in the present tense and the past tense, who know the Yiddish / Hebrew alphabet and who can read short texts in Yiddish (in Hebrew characters).
Specify your previous knowledge in your application.
Course literature
All course literature is not included in the course cost. You need to acquire the books “Yiddish, Volume 1” and “Yiddish, Volume 2” (Sheva Zucker, New York: Workmen’s Circle, 1994 och 2002) on your own. You will receive more information about the course books, that you purchase on your own, if you get accepted to the course.
About the teacher
Dr. Beruriah Wiegand is the Woolf Corob Lector in Yiddish at the University of Oxford. She holds a BA and MA in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from Leo Baeck College, London, and a Ph.D. from University College London, with a thesis on Jewish mystical motifs in the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer. She has lectured on Bashevis’s works and on Yiddish poetry at conferences in London, Oxford, Paris, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Ravenna, Warsaw, Moscow, Czernowitz, Vienna, Tel Aviv, New York, Boston and Ottawa.
She is also a Yiddish poet, who has published two bilingual collections with the H. Leyvik-farlag in Tel Aviv under the titles Tsi hot ir gezen mayn tsig? un andere lider – Have You Seen My Goat? And Other Poems (2012) and Kales-Breyshis – Kalat Bereshit and Other Poems (2018). As a translator from Yiddish she has published a bilingual edition of A.N. Stencl’s early verse, co-translated with Stephen Watts (Five Leaves, 2007), as well as a translation of a book of memoirs by the Grodno writer Leib Reizer (Yad Vashem, 2009).
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