Search results for: Yiddish

The Great Jewish Books Teacher Summer Seminar (July 7–August 2, 2019) is a program for teachers at Jewish middle and high schools interested in enriching their curricula with materials that reflect the breadth and depth of modern Jewish literature. The four-week seminar takes place at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, home to exhibits on Jewish history and culture as well as to a vast collection of Yiddish books.

The Yiddish Book Center is now accepting applications for the 2017–18 Fellowship Program. The Yiddish Book Center Fellowship Program offers recent college graduates a yearlong professional experience in Yiddish language and Jewish cultural work. Fellows spend a year as full-time staff members, learning valuable professional skills and contributing to the Center’s major projects, working closely with colleagues and supervisors.

A newly redesigned website offers unprecedented access to a thousand years of Yiddish literature and culture, including books, literary works in translation, oral histories, films, and archival audio recordings of lectures by and interviews with major Jewish writers and cultural figures. Together, these materials are a boon not just to scholars and students, but to anyone interested in exploring modern Jewish creativity and experience. The website is the work of the Yiddish Book Center, in Amherst, Massachusetts. “The redesigned site has something for everyone,” said Aaron Lansky, the Center’s founder and president. “It allows visitors to search all our collections at once—including materials in all genres, in both English and in Yiddish—and to instantly access or download any item, in its entirety, completely free of charge.”

In 1996 The National Authority for Yiddish Culture was founded to develop, nurture and enable the continuation of Yiddish culture. Five years ago, with the Authority mired in debt, then Minister of Culture and Sport, Limor Livnat appointed Dr. Sara Ziv, a respected educator, to chair the organization with the mission of putting the Authority back in order. Ziv studied Yiddish at Bar Ilan University before going on to do her doctorate, which dealt with Yiddish at the time of the early settlement of the Land of Israel. She also holds a second PhD in teacher training, and continues to head the International Channelat the MOFET Institute for Teacher Training, a nonprofit supported by the Ministry of Education. With the Authority’s books now balanced, Ziv says it is now going “full steam ahead in reaching for its goals and it has already made some impressive achievements.”