YIVO’s Yiddish Summer Program Welcomes its 47th Class
by JENNIFER YOUNG
Every summer since 1968, YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Summer Program has welcomed students of all ages and backgrounds to New York City, united in the common goal of immersing themselves in Yiddish language, literature, and culture. Our 38 students this year come from places such as France; China; and Boro Park, Brooklyn; as well as from Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel, and range in age from 17 to 74. This year, for the first time, the program is being held right here at YIVO, giving students even more opportunity to get to know YIVO, and for us to get to know them.
We began this past week by welcoming just our Elementary class, helping to ease the transition from their languages of daily use to a complete Yiddish immersion. One student told me that her teacher had assured her that within a few weeks, she would be dreaming in Yiddish. “Dreaming in Yiddish, can you imagine?” the student said to me. “Right now I’m just dreaming of dreaming in Yiddish!” Our faculty for the Elementary classes include Paula Teitelbaum, a native Yiddish speaker from Poland and a veteran YIVO Yiddish teacher; Sarah Ponichtera, a 2004 graduate of the summer program who now works as an archivist at the Center for Jewish History; and Eve Jochnowitz, also an alum, who runs our Elementary Yiddish classes during the year. Sheva Zucker, also a senior YIVO faculty member, joins us this year as academic advisor, meeting with the students individually and helping to tailor the program to match their needs.
This past Monday, we were joined by a number of special guests to help kick off our 47th year. Asya Schulman, Director of the Yiddish Language Institute at the Yiddish Book Center and also a YIVO alum, brought her eighteen Steiner Summer Yiddish Program students for a quick trip to New York, and they joined us for an evening of theater co-sponsored by the National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene and the Yiddish Book Center. The Folksbiene Troupe performed “Mama’s Loshn Kugel,” a musical revue featuring even more current YIVO faculty, Leyzer Burko and Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel, and led by YIVO alum Motl Didner. The Trupe took the stage after the performance for a talkback with the students about their work, and how they learned Yiddish. “My career as a director, producer, actor and translator would not have been possible without the YIVO Summer Program,” Didner told me. He took the program in 2003, and helped found the Trupe the following year, with five recent YIVO Summer Program alumni. The Trupe is made up of a group of young people in their twenties and thirties who have learned Yiddish as adults, and are passionate about finding their artistic expression through Yiddish language and culture.
New Yorkers are so lucky to have the opportunity to create these kinds of networks where Yiddish learners can find fulfillment beyond the classroom, embarking on new creative projects and building new professional and artistic relationships through their connection to Yiddish. Leyzer Burko, who took the YIVO Summer Program in 2004 and 2005, recalled that his participation in the YIVO program’s theater workshop in 2004, in which he performed a Yiddish imitation of George Bush, was instrumental to his joining the Folksbiene Trupe—Didner, who served as the YIVO summer program coordinator that year, was in the early stages of forming the Trupe, and, after seeing Burko’s performance, asked him to join. Now a doctoral candidate at the Jewish Theological Seminary, studying YIVO’s circle of linguists and their Yiddish language planning initiatives, Burko remarked that, since taking the summer program, “my life has been all Yiddish, all the time.”
As an alum of the 2004 cohort myself, it’s quite exciting to work alongside my former classmates and teachers, developing new ideas and projects and assuring Elementary students that it really does get easier (although wait till they discover periphrastic verbs!)
For this year’s students, the journey has just begun. Over the coming month, they will delve into literature, theater, and folklore; discover the cultural geography of the Lower East Side; and experience the variety of communities where Yiddish is spoken today, from Williamsburg to Yiddish Farm. You will hear more from our students as the summer progresses, as we will invite them to start blogging themselves about their YIVO experiences. In the meantime, let’s wish them a hartsike bagrisung [a hearty welcome] and hanoe un hatslokhe [fun and success]!
Jennifer Young is YIVO’s Director of Education.