Masters of Yiddish Prose

Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.

Instructor: Curt Leviant

This course will focus on close readings of seven major early 19th to mid-20th century Yiddish writers, six in prose—the Hasidic leader and storyteller Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Sholem Aleichem, Chaim Grade, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Avrom Reyzen, Lamed Shapiro—and one in poetry: the fabulist, Eliezer Shtaynbarg, that will illuminate the life and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.

With Reb Nachman (1772-1810)—the great-grandson of the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov—and himself an influential Hasidic leader, we meet a teller of spontaneous oral tales (later written in Yiddish and Hebrew), who tells moral and mystical stories that defy easy explanation and even influenced modern masters like Franz Kafka. For Sholem Aleichem, an unusual work will be featured: a forgotten short novel called Moshkele the Thief. Reading Chaim Grade, we are immersed in selected chapters from his famous novel, The Yeshiva, viewing the line between a life of religiosity and the temptations of the outside world. The stories by Reyzen offer tender glimpses into family life, while Shapiro, for the first time in Yiddish literature, boldly depicts the violence Jews suffered when Russian and Ukrainian peasants unleashed pogroms against them.

For each session, students in this course will be given weekly reading assignments along with questions that will be answered in written form. These assignments, plus insights offered by the instructor and questions asked by the students, will shape the course. Curt Leviant has translated most of the readings, and selections will be drawn from the books he has edited and rendered into English from the original Yiddish.

Course Materials:
Students are required to purchase the following books before the first date of class:

• Sholem Aleichem (translated by Curt Leviant), Moshkeleh the Thief, (The Jewish Publication Society) (Purchase)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Curt Leviant), More Stories from My Father’s Court, (Macmillan Publishers, 2001) (Purchase)

The instructor will provide all other course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Curt Leviant has translated six collections of Sholem Aleichem’s works. Among his fifteen volumes of translations from Yiddish are novels by Chaim Grade, a memoir by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and collections of stories by Avraham Reisen and Lamed Shapiro. Some of Leviant’s 12 novels have been published in nine European languages, in Israel, and in South America. His novel, Diary of an Adulterous Woman, was an international best seller and was cited in France in 2008 as one of the “Seven Best Novels of the Year.” His most recent novels are the critically acclaimed King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son, and Me, Mo, Mu, Ma & Mod. For his work with Yiddish and Hebrew literature, he has won several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.