spring 2023 Yiddish Classes
Chicago YIVO Society is excited to offer three Yiddish classes online starting in February. Class descriptions can be found below, and you can register here.
These classes will be held online via Zoom.
Tuition
Tuition rates for all courses are below. You will receive a link to make a payment at the time you complete registration, or you can pay here.
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$200 full tuition
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$135 reduced tuition
We also offer the Khane-Faygl Turtletaub Memorial Scholarship to cover full tuition for one student in need every semester. To apply for the scholarship, please email yiddishchicago@gmail.com
No student is turned away for inability to pay, to arrange an alternative payment plan please write to us separately at yiddishchicago@gmail.com.
Course Materials
After you've registered for class, you'll receive information from the instructors a couple weeks before your first class regarding any needed materials. An English-Yiddish dictionary is always recommended, but not required. A great option is the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary edited by Gitl Schaechter-Vishwanath and Paul Glaser.
Meet The Teachers
Benna Kessler
Benna grew up speaking Yiddish at home with her mother. She has studied Yiddish at the YIVO Intensive Yiddish Summer Program and, most recently, at the Maison de la Culture Yiddish in Paris. She has attended the annual Yugntruf Yidish Vokh every year since she was two. And she has has previously taught Beginner and Intermediate Yiddish for Yiddish Chicago.
Dovid Forman
Dovid Forman is the grandson of Yiddish author Solomon Simon. Forman was first a calligrapher, then a psychology professor before finally returning to his early love of writing. A published poet, he began studying Yiddish in his fifties to fulfill a lifelong vow of reading his grandfather’s work. In October, 2021, his translation of Simon's The Clever Little Tailor was published in a bilingual edition. Dovid lives in Ithaca, NY, where he has worked at Cornell University as a library cataloguer and Yiddish instructor.