Spring 2017 Course Preview, part 1: SAY IT IN YIDDISH!

Introduction to Yiddish Language and Literature
David Schlitt, adjunct professor-- SEE BIO BELOW 
JS 0040 /GER 0033
Th 6-8:30 pm
For hundreds of years, the majority of Jewish life happened in Yiddish. On the eve of World War II, eleven million Jews spoke this rich, Slavic-infused Germanic language. After undergoing the demographic devastation of the Holocaust and experiencing marginalization of all kinds, Yiddish has survived as a linguistic chain that connects modern diaspora Jewry to centuries of Jewish civilization and culture. Yiddish is key to some of the most exciting creative and cultural developments happening in Jewish life today. This course will serve as a lively introduction to Yiddish language and culture. By the end of the course, students will have the reading proficiency to work with basic Yiddish texts, and will be able to understand and conduct simple conversations. Students will learn the basics of Yiddish grammar and will be conversant in Yiddish culture, both past and present.
David Schlitt is Director of the Rauh Jewish History Program and Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center. An archivist-historian with a decade of experience in public history, Schlitt has worked at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was the Yiddish-language project archivist for the Elie Wiesel Archives at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.