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Yiddish

Faculty

Courses

Jewish Films and Literature

GRMN 1090 / COML 1090 / ENGL 1289 / JWST 1090
Arts & Letters Sector: May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters.

From the 1922 silent film "Hungry Hearts" through the first "talkie," "The Jazz Singer," produced in 1927, and beyond "Schindler's List," Jewish characters have confronted the problems of their Jewishness on the silver screen for a general American audience. Alongside this Hollywood tradition of Jewish film, Yiddish film blossomed from independent producers between 1911 and 1939, and interpreted literary masterpieces, from Shakespeare's "King Lear" to Sholom Aleichem's "Teyve the Dairyman," primarily for an immigrant, urban Jewish audience. In this course, we will study a number of films and their literary sources (in fiction and drama), focusing on English language and Yiddish films within the framework of three dilemmas of interpretation: a) the different ways we "read" literature and film, b) the various ways that the media of fiction, drama, and film "translate" Jewish culture, and c) how these translations of Jewish culture affect and are affected by their implied audience.

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Women in Jewish Literature

GRMN 1100 / GSWS 1100 / JWST 1100 / NELC 0375
Arts & Letters Sector: May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters.

This course will introduce Penn students of literature, women's studies, and Jewish studies -- both undergraduates and graduates -- to the long tradition of women as readers, writers, and subjects in Jewish literature (in translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, and in English). By examining the interaction of culture, gender, and religion in a variety of literary works by Jewish authors, from the seventeenth century to the present, the course will argue for the importance of Jewish women's writing. Authors include Glikl of Hameln, Cynthia Ozick, Anzia Yezierska, Kadya Molodowsky, Esther Raab, Anne Frank, and others. "Jewish woman, who knows your life? In darkness you have come, in darkness do you go." J. L. Gordon (1890)

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Jewish American Literature

GRMN 1110 / COML 1110 / JWST 1110
Arts & Letters Sector: May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters.

This course introduces novels, short fiction and poetry written in America by Jews. Issues of Jewish identity and ethnicity in an American context inform our discussions. We will consider how literary form and language develop as Jewish writers "immigrated" from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Using the new Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology and other texts, we will read authors who wrote between 1800 and 2000. These writers include: Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman.

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Translating Cultures: Literature on and in Translation

GRMN 1120 / COML 1120 / JWST 1120
Benjamin Franklin Seminar, All readings and lectures in English
Arts & Letters Sector

"Languages are not strangers to one another," writes the great critic and translator Walter Benjamin.  Yet two people who speak different languages have a difficult time talking to one another, unless they both know a third, common language or can find someone who knows both their languages to translate what they want to say.  Without translation, most of us would not be able to read the Bible or Homer, the foundations of Western culture.  Americans wouldn't know much about the cultures of Europe, China, Africa, South America, and the Middle East.  And people who live in or come from these places would not know much about American culture.  Without translation, Americans would not know much about the diversity of cultures within America.  The very fabric of our world depends upon translation between people, between cultures, between texts.

With a diverse group of readings—autobiography, fiction, poetry, anthropology, and literary theory—this course will address some fundamental questions about translating language and culture.  What does it mean to translate?  How do we read a text in translation?  What does it mean to live between two languages?  Who is a translator?   What are different kinds of literary and cultural translation?  What are their principles and theories?  Their assumptions and practices?  Their effects on and implications for the individual and the society?

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Beginning Yiddish I

YDSH 0100 / JWST 0160 (formerly YDSH 101 / JWST031)

Yiddish is a 1000-year-old language with a rich heritage. This course introduces the skills of reading, writing, and speaking Yiddish through the study of grammar, enriched by cultural materials such as song, literature, folklore, and film. This course assumes no previous knowledge of Yiddish.

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Beginning Yiddish II

YDSH 0200 / JWST 0260 (formerly YDSH 102 / JWST032)
Prerequisite(s): YDSH 0100 or permission of the instructor.

In this course, you can continue to develop basic reading, writing and speaking skills. Discover treasures of Yiddish culture: songs, literature, folklore, and films.

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

Intermediate Yiddish I

YDSH 0300 / JWST 0360 (formerly YDSH 103 / JWST 033)
Prerequisite(s): YDSH 0200 or permission of the instructor.

A continuation of YDSH 0200 (formerly YDSH 102/JWST 032), Beginning Yiddish II, this course develops the skills of reading, writing, and speaking Yiddish on the intermediate level through the study of grammar and cultural materials, such as literature, newspapers, films, songs, radio programs.

Instructor: Alexander Botwinik

Intermediate Yiddish II

YDSH 0400 / JWST 0460 (formerly YDSH 104 / JWST 034)
Prerequisite(s): YDSH 0300 or permission of the instructor.

Continuation of YDSH 0300. Emphasis on reading texts and conversation.

Instructor: Alexander Botwinik

Readings in Modern Yiddish Literature

YDSH 0550 / JWST 0550 (formerly YDSH 108 / JWST438)
Pre-requisite YDSH 0400 or permission of instructor

Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein

 

Topics in Yiddish Literature: Modernist Jewish Poetry

YDSH 5090 / COML 5090 / GRMN 5090 / GSWS 5090 / JWST 5090

Modernist Jewish Poetry

One version of this seminar considers works by Jewish women who wrote in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and other languages in the late 19th through the 20th century. The texts, poetry and prose, will include both belles lettres and popular writings, such as journalism, as well as private works (letters and diaries) and devotional works. The course will attempt to define "Jewish writing, " in terms of language and gender, and will consider each writer in the context of the aesthetic, religious, and national ideologies that prevailed in this period. Because students will come with proficiency in various languages, all primary texts and critical and theoretical materials will be taught in English translation. However, those students who can, will work on the original texts and share with the class their expertise to foster a comparative perspective. Because we will be discussing translated works, a secondary focus of the course will, in fact, be on literary translation's process and products. Another version of this seminar presents Jewish modernism as an international phenomenon of the early 20th century. The course will attempt to define "Jewish modernism" through the prism of poetry, which inevitably, given the historical events in Europe and America during this time, grapples with aesthetic, religious, and national ideologies and methods. The syllabus will focus mainly on poetry written in Yiddish and English, and will also include German, Russian, and Hebrew verse. All poetry, critical, and theoretical materials will be taught in English translation, although students who know the languages will work on the original texts and will bring to the table a comparative perspective. Because we will be discussing translated poems, a secondary focus of the course will, in fact, be on literary translation's process and products.