Perhaps no language has been pronounced dead so many times as Yiddish. Its final demise has been anticipated since the eighteenth century yet the language keeps on going, with its number of speakers on the rise for the first time in decades since the Holocaust. Long discounted as a comic mix of German and other languages, it is today taught in universities around the world (and Duolingo!)  Commonly associated with backwards life in shtetls, it is has for a century been spoken mainly in global metropolises and has shaped English, Hebrew, and other languages. It has even produced an internationally recognized literature, including a Noble Prize winner.  

In these talks, we’ll address common myths and misconceptions about Yiddish – a language Jews have alternately loved and been ashamed of - to learn what it can tell us about where Ashkenazic Jews come from and where they are going.

BIO

Kalman Weiser is the Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and Director of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. He specializes in the Yiddish language and culture and in modern Jewish history.

His most recent volume is Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism (2021). He is now completing two books - one about the complex relationships across the decades between four Yiddish linguists - two Jewish, two Germans who became Nazis; the other about how refuge scholars transformed the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Vilna, Poland into today's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

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