Eighty-two students graduated on July 28 from the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, the world’s longest-running Yiddish summer program.
This summer’s program brought together students from 20 states in the United States and 12 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Israel, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United States. And for the second year in a row, the program featured two tracks running concurrently, one online and one in-person.
Academic offerings included seminars on Yiddish literature and culture, as well as electives on Yiddish song, cooking, pickling, archival research and the art of translation. The program also included “The Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series,” covering broad topics from Yiddish opera, poetry and literature to education, popular culture and the development of the Yiddish language.
On Friday nights, the course hosted Shabbat farbrengens, celebratory online gatherings where students met and chatted with a special guest from the world of Yiddish arts and culture. Guests this year included Yiddish singer Sveta Kundish, journalist and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen, and novelist and essayist Dara Horn—all alumni of the Summer Program.
Other highlights included a visit to CYCO, the last Yiddish bookstore in New York City, and two tours. The first, led by urban geographer Elissa Sampson, focused on the history of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The second tour, through the Chassidic Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., was offered twice—once in English and once in Yiddish—led by Frieda Vizel, a Williamsburg native whose YouTube channel focuses on Chassidic culture. Her videos also air on Jewish Life Television.
