YIVO summer program success
"Not only did my knowledge of language and culture improve, but the connections I made and the people I met at YIVO helped to open the doors to so many aspects of the Yiddish community across North America."
In July students graduated from the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the world’s longest-running Yiddish summer program.
This year, Monash University student Nicola Hearn attended as part of a program sponsored by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation run by Professor Rebecca Margolis, director and Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation.
Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s director of education, told The AJN, “We were delighted to welcome Nicola Hearn to YIVO’s summer program this year. Hearn travelled a greater physical distance than any other student in 2022, but that long journey greatly enriched our program.”
In 2020, in response to the pandemic, the program moved online for the first time and saw some of its largest enrolments in its more than 50-year history. This year, the program used the lessons learned from running online for the last two years, as well as its previous years running in person, to create a streamlined, engaging program for its students.
YIVO introduced a unique program feature to meet students where they are by having two programs running concurrently, one online and one in person.
“This year’s program is our latest innovation in teaching Yiddish,” said Kaplan.
“Students have different learning needs for their summer study, and the flexibility of this year’s dual format ensures our program is accessible regardless of where students find themselves in life or in the world.”
Hearn is doing her PhD at Monash in queer Yiddishkayt and has extended her travels beyond YIVO to other parts of North America and Canada to further her research.
She said, “I had a wonderful and transformative time at the YIVO summer Yiddish program this year! For my studies, it has been important that I develop a strong understanding of Yiddish language, and the YIVO summer program has an outstanding global reputation for language pedagogy and learning.”
Hearn added that the immersive and intensive learning environment helped her to improve her language proficiency “in leaps and bounds”.
She told The AJN that, “The YIVO summer program laid the foundation for the remainder of my PhD fieldwork in North America. Not only did my knowledge of language and culture improve, but the connections I made and the people I met at YIVO helped to open the doors to so many aspects of Yiddish community across North America.”
Hearn added that she is “passionate” about the future of Yiddish in Melbourne and globally, and that she is “so grateful to have had the opportunity to study at YIVO and to have made this strong foundation for my PhD studies”.
Margolis said, “We are so proud of Hearn’s accomplishments in studying the Yiddish language and its culture, as well as the ways in which she has connected and built relationships within the North American Yiddish community as part of her ethnographic film project. We are grateful to our donors for their generous support of enrichment opportunities for our students.”
Kaplan concluded that they “look forward to having many more Australian students join us at YIVO in the near future, and hope Hearn’s experience serves as inspiration for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the world of Yiddish language and culture”.
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