Hasidic Yiddish Studies in Europe

From July 12 to July 18, 2024, a special educational program dedicated to today’s Hasidic Yiddish was held at the campus of the University of Vienna. A similar course will be offered from July 23 to August 4 during the Yiddish Summer festival in Weimar, Germany. Its organizers explain that although academic programs typically only teach standard literary Yiddish, this year they decided to do something new: to focus on the Hasidic variants of Yiddish spoken as a daily language by around one million people across the world.

The teaching team includes both native speakers of Hasidic Yiddish and expert researchers who are members of the innovative Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish group at UCL (University College London). Both the Vienna and Weimar programs cover such diverse subjects as modern Hasidic fiction, traditional and pop music, dances, film, and more.