Hitting the Road with Ester-Rokhl

Tuition: $240 | YIVO members: $180**
 

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This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, 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 Yiddish.

Instructor: Mikhl Yashinsky

Together we will read excerpts from the memoirs of Esther-Rokhl Kaminska, the “Mother of Yiddish Theatre,” published in 2025 in translation with notes and an introduction by the instructor. As her brilliant and revealing story unfolds, we will follow Kaminska from her native shtetl, to the barns in which her wandering troupe first performs, and eventually to the brightly lit stages of Warsaw. On our trip with her aboard her careening covered wagon, we will become acquainted with Madame Kaminska’s personality, witness the customs and linguistic quirks of her religious childhood environment and of her troupe, and delve into the sights and sounds of the world this outstanding diva describes, using her own language to enrich our own.

Yiddish Level:
Suitable for all those with at least a second-year knowledge of Yiddish and good reading ability. Readings and discussion will be in Yiddish, with students encouraged to read the instructor's English-language introduction to Kaminska in his translation—which we will also be using for the images it contains—and invited to read here and there in the translation to enhance their understanding (and to look into chapters not covered in class).

Course Materials:
The Mother of Yiddish Theatre: Memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, translated and edited by Mikhl Yashinsky (Purchase)

Excerpts from Kaminska's Yiddish-language memoirs, Derner un blumen: der veg fun mayn lebn (1926), along with other materials, including theatrical photographs and recordings and lyrics of songs Kaminska describes, will be provided digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Mikhl Yashinsky is a writer, singer-actor, and teacher in Manhattan. He was born in Detroit and graduated with a degree in modern European history and literature from Harvard. His “Di psure loyt khaim” (The Gospel According to Chaim), put on by New Yiddish Rep in 2024, was hailed as the first new full-length Yiddish-language drama produced professionally in the United States, outside of the Hasidic world, for many decades and “jolted the repertoire with a work that is both traditional and delightfully subversive” (Forward). His Yiddish-language erotic one-act “Vos flist durkhn oder” (Blessing of the New Moon) premièred at 2022’s Lower East Side Play Festival. With National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he has performed in “Fidler afn dakh” (Fiddler on the Roof) directed by Joel Grey, “Tsvishn falndike vent” (Amid Falling Walls) and “Di kishef-makherin” (The Sorceress), in which Mikhl brought a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role (New York Times). In 2023, Yashinsky made his Carnegie Hall début, singing the anthem of the Vilna Partisans in the Holocaust memorial concert “We Are Here.” He has taught Yiddish at Columbia, University of Michigan, Tel Aviv University, UMass Amherst, the Yiddish Book Center, YIVO, and The Workers Circle, and co-authored the award-winning textbook “In eynem.” His translations of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, the “Mama of Yiddish Theatre,” and the detective stories of Max Spitzkopf, the “Yiddish Sherlock Holmes,” were published in 2025 by Bloomsbury and the Yiddish Book Center, respectively. More information on his website: www.yashinsky.com

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