Language

Yiddish instruction is offered at three levels (beginners, intermediate and advanced) throughout the academic year. For detailed information about these classes and to register, please contact the Division of Foreign Languages at Tel Aviv University, Tel: 6409465/6409681, or contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Teachers:

Beginners:

Mr. Daniel Birnbaum, Monday 12:00-16:00, Dan David 108

Intermediate:

Mr. Daniel Birnbaum, Monday 16:00-20:00, Dan David 108

Literature

Aviv Livnat, Fall Semester, Wednesday, 12:00-14:00, Gilman 277

Falling Stars: Yiddish Cinema between East and West (with the Department of General BA-Studies)

Yiddish film was part of the modern gust of wind which threatened to destabilize Jewish society during the first decades of the twentieth century and one can find in it reflections of social, psychological and spiritual turmoil.

This cinematic treasure allows for a unique look into three dynamic and most dramatic decades in the Jewish sphere- days full of promise and new opportunities, while at the same time echoing a growing distress and anticipating imminent tragedy.

Many films deal with the fracture of the Jewish traditional community and the Jewish family during an age of massive immigration, urbanization, and modernization. Some deal with the tension between Jewish and gentile professions such as Chazan and opera singer; others deal with politics, education and Jewish identity, gender issues, religion and secularization, dibbuks and mystics.

After the war, Yiddish film lost its audience, its creative forces. The Yiddish cinema stars who did survive, the falling stars, expressed the path of the Yiddish cinema which was bright and fast both in its ascent and decline.

During the course we will examine the artistic cooperation within important cinema productions in the Polish, Russian and American scenes and the reception of those films. The course will also examine comparative aspects of Yiddish and general cinema with its avant-garde and mainstream tendencies as well as its contribution to the Hollywood project.

Roy Greenwald, Spring Semester, Monday 16:00-18:00, Gilman 306

A World Downhill: Modernism between Revolution and Destruction (with the Department of Literature)

Yiddish literature written between the two world wars was a site for bold experiments reflecting the revolutionary ideologies and modernist impulses that dominated the Yiddish artistic scene on both sides of the Atlantic.

This course will focus on major works in both prose and poetry dating from this turbulent period and our readings will try to trace the violent and productive encounter between Yiddish culture and modernist movements in Europe and America. Reading material will be in Hebrew translation and no knowledge of Yiddish is required.

Previous Years

2010-2011

Mr. Roy Greewald, Spring Semester, Sunday 14:00-16:00, Gilman 280

Writing in a Minority Language (with the Department of Literature)

In this course, we will explore the meaning of writing in a minority language as reflected in four classic novels in Yiddish literature by Mendele Moyker Sforim, Sholem Aleykhem, Yankev Glatshteyn and Isroel Rabon. We will try to understand the characteristic features of a literature that is written in a minority language--a literature, that is not written within a national territory but is rather nomadic across both space and time. In addition to reading the literary works themselves, we will also look at several theoretical approaches to the matter. No knowledge of Yiddish is required; the novels can be read in Hebrew translation.

2009-10

Mr. Matan Hermoni, Fall Semester, Monday 14:00-16:00, Webb 102

Jewish Writings in America (crosslisted in the Departments of General BA-Studies, of Literature and of English and American Studies)

The course deals with Jewish writings in America at the turn of the 20th century, and the poetic peaks reached especially by Yiddish literature, faithfully depicting immigrant life in the New World. During the course we will examine the evolution of American Jewish Literature, from the Haskala tradition, through the popular "Pulp" (Shund) literature and into the mature Modernist works of the 1920's and 1930's, works that include some of the highlights not only of Jewish literature but of all Modernist writing.

The course is historically oriented and will examine the ways in which history was expressed poetically. Special consideration will be given to the contrast between the Old continent and the New World; the major tension behind the Jewish literary works of the era.

The works that will be read include:

Sholem Aleichem: Mottle, Paisy the Cantor's Son

L. Shapiro – "Doc"

Y. Glatshteyn - The Yash Novels

Finally we will read a selection of Yiddish poems by poets such as Moishe-Leib Halpern, Many Leib and A.G. Leyeles.

Texts can be read in either English or Hebrew translation, the language of instruction is Hebrew. Papers and assignments for students in the English department will be in English.

Syllabus

Reading Material: Matan Hermoni - Yiddish in America

Mr. Aviv Livnat, Fall Semester, Wednesday 12:00-14:00, Gilman 277

Yiddish and Avant-Garde in Interwar Eastern Europe (General BA-Studies)

The course deals with developments of Avant-Garde trends among the Yiddish speaking Jewish population in interwar Eastern Europe. It will deal with varied expressions of Avant-Garde in Yiddish literature and poetry, theatre, cinema, and the arts. We will focus mainly on the Yiddish Avant-Garde as expressed in political tendencies and artistic currents such as Expressionism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism, Anarchism and diverse expressions of the political and artistic Avant-Garde. Visual presentations, music, films and special archival materials will accompany the course.

Reading Material can be obtained at the virtual TAU-HighLearn course platform

Previous Years

2008-9

Mr. Roy Greenwald, Spring semester, Sunday 16:00-18:00

Portrait of a Catastrophe: Modernist Yiddish Literature (with the Department of Literature)

In this course we will discuss the representation of violence in the works of three central Yiddish writers of the 20th century: The writer Lamed Shapiro and the poets Peretz Markish and Uri Zvi Greenberg. By close readings of their works, we will analyze their attitudes toward Jewish tradition, martyrology, and historiography. We will also read theoretical texts by Walter Benjamin as well as prominent manifestos of the Yiddish avant-garde. During the course we will discuss poetic aspects of writings which were, without exception, written in light of the approaching catastrophe.

The course does not require knowledge of the Yiddish language, as the texts will be read in the Hebrew translation. Course requirement: term paper.

2007-8

Professor Dan Miron, Department of English and American Studies (cross listed with the Department of Literature)

This course examined New York as a Real and Symbolic 'Locus' in Yiddish American Literature. It addressed the main aspects of the Jewish New York experience as reflected in the writings of Yiddish poets and writers of prose fiction, and traced the various levels of significance the "place" assumed in their works.

The course had four foci: a) the New York ambience through the eyes of the immigrants (texts for discussion: a selection from Morris Rozenfeld's "Sweat-Shop" poetry; a selection from Moyshe Leyb Halpern's "In New York" [both Hebrew and Yiddish translations are available), and the Yoysef Opatoshu's first New York novella: "In New-Yorker Ghetto." It also discussed David Ignatov's short novel :"In Kessl Grub," a unique attempt to refract the Immigrants' experience through the prism of Symbolist prose. b) problems of acculturation. The main text was Sholem Asch's "East River," in many ways the author's best creation as well as the most intriguing New York "epic", where a social history of the Jewish garment industry in New york, a rivetting family saga and an exploration of the themes of faith, agnosticism, Jewish-Christian interactions and the emergence of a particular kind of an American-New Yorkish Jewish sainthood (as distinguised from the European-Hasidic brand) are dexterously intertwined. c) New York of the Inzikhistn: a small anthology of New York poems by A.G.Leyeles, Y. Glatshteyn, J.L.Teller and B. Alkvit were discussed as well as excerpts from Glatshteyn's Yash novels. d) "Hard Boiled" Jewish New York of the Great Depression. Main texts: B. Demblin's "West Side" and Berish Vaynshteyn "Brukhvarg

2006-7

Dan Miron, Department of Literature

This coursed discussed works of the Yiddish-American poet Y. Glatshteyn.

2005-6

Dan Miron, Department of Literature

Bilingual texts in Jewish literatures

This course analyzed texts, prose and poetry, written both in Hebrew and in Yiddish. Most of the texts were written during the period of "Hatkhia" at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Students read texts by Hasidic authors as the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Nahman, as well as Maskilic parodies on these texts by Yosef Perl.

In addition they read works by M. I. Berdichevsky, S. I. Abramovitch, Y.L. Peretz, H.N. Bialik, Yaakov Steinberg and Y.D. Berkovitch.