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COURSE MATERIALS
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GENERAL COURSE INFORMATION
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Program: This five-session online mini-course is part of the Workmens Circle Summer Program in Yiddish Studies in the summer of 2022.
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Inquiries: coordinator Baruch Blum at: bblum@circle.org and/or program director Nikolai Borodulin at: nborodulin@circle.org.
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Sessions: 2 PM NY time (11 AM LA, 7 PM London, 8 PM Paris/Berlin, 9 PM Tel Aviv/Vilnius etc) on the following five Sundays: (1) 17 July, (2) 24 July, (3) 31 July, (4) 14 Aug. and (5) 21 Aug.
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Recommended dictionaries: For advanced reading of Hasidic Yiddish texts, please consult the instructor’s list of works for reading Yiddish literature; and for 21st century Hasidic Yiddish specifically, Mrs. B. Roth’s indispensable Yidish verter oytser (Roth Publishers Inc., 2009 and subsequent revised editions); also: Yuta Rivka Shtein’s Milon l’sefat hayidish (Israel 2011).
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Instructor: Dovid Katz. Personal website. Facebook. Email: dovidkatz7@yahoo.com. You are invited to send missing English words (and corrections!) to the (English-Yiddish) Yiddish Cultural Dictionary. Works on Yiddish stylistics (Tikney Takones). On Yiddish linguistics. Yiddish fiction. Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) studies. Holocaust studies. The Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA).
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Acknowledgments: Sincerest thanks to Genesis University and its CEO Robert Frankel, to Albert Rosenblatt; and to Mr. Charles R. Wein for their generosity of spirit in providing the needed corpus of 2022 (and 2021) Hasidic Yiddish periodicals to enable the course to proceed.
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Course Description
The five-session online summer course comprises readings from current Hasidic magazines (from 2022, some from 2021), in the classic Yiddish reading circle (léyenkrayz) spirit of taking turns reading selections. There will be emphasis on diversity of texts and their language, and discussion of style, grammar, vocabulary, spelling and “linguistic directionality” in the spirit of ascertaining the actual structure and grammar of current Hasidic Yiddish in print. This text-based course is concentrated on gaining familiarity, facility and comprehension of current published Hasidic Yiddish, with discussion of relationships to other forms of Yiddish, past, present and future. Please note that it is not a course about contemporary Hasidim, or other Haredim, or their groupings and issues, or of modern religious Judaism. It is a contemporary snapshot of a language in print, and the implications of this (standardized?) language in print for the history and future of Yiddish.
Texts read will be provided as scan-ins preserved in PDF format that will be added to this page during the course.
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