Yiddish for Beginners (semester 1)

This is a course designed for students with no prior knowledge of Yiddish, although knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet would be highly desirable.

We are going to use the textbook “Yiddish, Volume 1″. This textbook is suitable both for students who know the Hebrew alphabet already and students who don’t. Each unit will introduce a certain number of letters and give words and short sentences with these letters, until students will have all the letters used in Yiddish.

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!

ברוכים הבאים
Bruchim H’boim, Welcome!

The course is given in collaboration with International Yiddish Center Vilnius, Paideia – the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden and Jiddischsällskapet i Stockholm.

Paideia folkhögskola also offers the courses Yiddish for Advanced Beginners, semester 5 and Yiddish conversation (Yiddish/Swedish) as online courses the spring semester of 2025. Please see more information under each course’s webpage.

Course structure

We will start each session with some Yiddish conversation, which will build up more and more as we go along. 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.

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. 

Students who don’t know the alphabet as yet will have to work at home every week to learn to read and write words and sentences with the new letters introduced in each unit. Students who know Hebrew will learn all the differences in writing and reading between Hebrew and Yiddish.

Prior knowledge

This is a course designed for students with no prior knowledge of Yiddish, although knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet would be highly desirable.

To apply 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.

Course literature

All course literature is not included in the course cost. You need to acquire the book on your own.

• “Yiddish, Volume 1″ (Sheva Zucker, New York: Workmen’s Circle, 1994) 

You will receive more information about the course book 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.

Photo: The image is of a painting by Jean Hessel.