The Jews of Mexico
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: Ilan Stavans
Since their first arrival as conversos with the Spanish army in the early 16th century, Mexico has become a center of different Jewish religious, ideological, ethnic, and cultural traditions. Sephardim, Ottomans, Ashkenazim, Communists, Shoah survivors, Hasidim, and Israelis, among others, coexist. The course explores their parallel immigration patterns, the contributions they have made to numerous realms, the antisemitism they face, and the identity they have shaped. Discussion will include languages like Yiddish, Ladino, Spanish, Hebrew, and English, personalities such as Luis de Carvajal the Younger, Isaac Berliner, Jacobo Glantz, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Gloria Gervitz, Rosa Nissán, Miriam Moscona, Angelina Muniz-Huberman, and the current president Claudia Sheinbaum. Participants will delve into the political, social, religious, and cultural landscape through stories, poems, essays, letters, art and photography, as well as recipes, songs, liturgy, etc.
Course Materials:
Students should purchase the following texts:
- Nissán, Rosa. Like a Bride (University of New Mexico Press). (Purchase)
- Sadow, Stephen, ed. I Am of the Tribe of Judah (University of New Mexico Press). (Purchase)
- Stavans, Ilan. On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (Penguin). (Purchase)
- Sabor Judío: The Jewish-Mexican Cookbook (Ferris and Ferris). (Purchase)
- The Return of Carvajal: A Mystery (Penn State UP). (Purchase)
The instructor will provide all other course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.
Questions? Read our 2026 Winter Program FAQ.
Ilan Stavans is is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous international awards and honors, his work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, TV, radio, and theater. His latest books are Conversations on Dictionaries: The Universe in a Book, Lamentations of Nezahualcoyotl: Nahuatl Poems, and, due out in April, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands. He is a New York Public Library-Fordham fellow for the academic year 2025-2026.
**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.