Learn Yiddish Online at UT Austin
Faculty in the University's College of Liberal Arts teach more than three dozen global languages. Through the Texas Language Gateway (TLG) partnership with University Extension, many of those languages are now available to learners everywhere.
!שלום־עליכם (Sholem-aleykhem!)
Through a partnership between UT Austin's College of Liberal Arts and the Yiddish Book Center we are excited to offer a three-course series to help students achieve intermediate proficiency in Yiddish, covering two years of material in three semesters, thus fulfilling most college language requirements.
In addition to language proficiency, these courses will also delve into the culture of Yiddish as it has been shaped and expressed in places as diverse as Eastern Europe, Argentina, and New York. Topics may include Yiddish literature and folklore (including humor, golems, and dybbuks), the Hasidic world, the Jewish labor movement, and Soviet Yiddish culture, among others.
Why learn Yiddish?
Yiddish is a Germanic language, usually written in Hebrew characters, which contains many words borrowed from Hebrew and Slavic. For over one thousand years, Yiddish was spoken as a vernacular by Ashkenazi Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. As such, Yiddish was the language of Jewish social and economic life, and later also came to represent a vibrant literary and cultural life.
When in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century millions of Jews emigrated from Europe, they spread the Yiddish language all over the world, with the United States becoming one of the major new centers of Yiddish and Jewish life and culture. Yiddish studies at UT uniquely stress intercultural contacts--from Russia and Galicia to Broadway.
Course Sequence
These courses are 100% online and include live-streaming video. Real-time participation is required during scheduled meeting times. Exams must be taken on the assigned dates.
UEX courses are open-enrollment, and everyone pays the same registration fee regardless of residency status.
Funding support may be available to a limited number of students who are unable to use other education funding resources to pay the registration fee. For more information, please email Gretchen Fiordalice, Director of Education Administration, gfiordalice@yiddishbookcenter.org.
First-Year Yiddish I - $850
This class is designed to introduce students to Yiddish language and culture. Students develop proficiency as speakers, readers, listeners, and writers of Yiddish by using the language actively with their peers and instructor. No prior coursework in Yiddish is required.
First-Year Yiddish II - $850
Students continue to develop skills as Yiddish speakers, readers, listeners, and writers by using the language actively with their peers and instructor. By the end of the course, students will be able to discuss their lives and immediate world (school, job, house, food, family) in long sentences and, with effort, in the occasional paragraph.
Second-Year Yiddish I - $850
This course develops Yiddish language proficiency through a focus on Yiddish storytelling. It emphasizes peer-to-peer communication and engagement with Yiddish as a global culture. Students improve their proficiency as speakers, writers, readers, and listeners of Yiddish through active engagement with a variety of Yiddish stories and speakers.
Meet the Faculty
Adrien Smith is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in UT's Department of Germanic Studies, where she teaches Yiddish, Jewish folklore and Eastern-European Jewish history. She has a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Stanford University. Her research looks at Yiddish speech style in Russian literature and performance in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as at Soviet science fiction.
