YIVO Marks 59th Annual Graduation of World's Longest-Running Yiddish Summer Program

On Friday, July 31, 2026, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City celebrated the 59th annual graduation of the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.

Established in 1968, the YIVO Summer Program is the world's first and longest-running Yiddish summer program. It has become the leading academic program dedicated to preserving, promoting, and deepening the understanding of the Yiddish language and the rich, thousand-year cultural heritage that has developed alongside it.

With students from around the world, the YIVO-Bard Summer Program reflects the broad international interest in Yiddish language and culture today. This year’s graduates came from eight countries - Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States -and ranged in age from sixteen to people in their seventies underscoring the programs unique intergenerational learning environment.

“Yiddish studies remains a vital focus in the humanities across the world,” said Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s Director of Education. “We’re proud to offer a wide variety of courses to accommodate YIVO’s wonderfully diverse student body, and look forward to the launch of a first-of-its kind MA in Yiddish Civilization in the coming years which will expand YIVO’s impact even further.”

YIVO’s Summer Program immerses its students in the thousand-year history of Yiddish civilization – its richness, complexity, beauty, and significance to the Jewish people and the world. Alumni from the Summer Program have gone on to careers as leading academics, scholars, and authors; world-renowned musicians and artists; archivists, librarians, and conservators; and educators whose work promotes the continued legacy of Ashkenazi Jewish life. Many of the program’s faculty are graduates of the Summer Program themselves, as are numerous current YIVO staff members.

"How inspiring to spend nearly two months, day in and day out, in the presence of so many devoted Yiddish students – each coming to their study of the language and its culture in order to fulfill their different practical needs: as academics, as performers, as Jews engaging with their heritage, as future teachers, as community leaders, as specialists in language, song, or theater," said Dovid Braun, the program’s Academic Director.

Participants spend six to seven weeks immersed in the study of Yiddish language, literature, and culture. With over 180 course hours, students are eligible to receive university credit through Bard College.

The curriculum included seminars on: Yiddish theater, taught by Shane Baker; the history of Yiddish culture, taught by Prof. Cecile Kuznitz; and Yiddish literature, taught by Prof. Anita Norich. Electives were offered on the Yiddish press, Yiddish literature, the history of Ashkenazi Jewish foodways, archival research, Yiddish song, and vegetable pickling. New to the program this year was an in-person guest speaker series featuring Tamara Helfer, a former research astronomer turned Yiddish literature translator; literary scholar Prof. Miriam Udel; Yiddish singer Riki Rose; and Frieda Vizel, founder of a popular YouTube channel focusing on Hasidic life and contemporary Jewish culture.

The program also featured the annual Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series which presented cutting-edge online lectures by today’s foremost researchers of Yiddish civilization, including Prof. Nathan Cohen, Prof. Zvi Gitelman, Benny Mer, Prof. Claudia Rosenzweig, Daria Vakhrushova, and Prof. Rebekka Voss. Two were delivered in English, the other four in Yiddish; the lectures may be viewed by the public on YIVO’s YouTube channel.

Beyond obligatory morning classes, the curriculum included seminars on: Yiddish theater, taught by Shane Baker; the history of Yiddish culture, taught by Prof. Cecile Kuznitz; and Yiddish literature, taught by Prof. Marc Caplan. Electives were offered on Yiddish poetry, Yiddish literature, archival research, Yiddish songs, and vegetable pickling.

Off-campus activities included a visit to CYCO, the USA’s only bookstore devoted exclusively to Yiddish titles; a tour by Prof. Eugene Orenstein of Mount Carmel Cemetery, where many Yiddish writers and public figures are buried; and a historical tour of the Lower East Side by scholars Elissa Sampson and Prof. Jonathan Boyarin.

For the first time since 2019, the Summer Program was held exclusively in person, with 64 students participating. To expand access for students seeking online study during the summer, YIVO also launched a brand-new Summer Semester, offering weekly courses over six weeks in July and August. This marks the first time in YIVO's history that weekly courses have been offered during every academic term (winter, spring, summer, and fall) expanding access to YIVO's educational programs for students around the world.

YIVO also expanded its international partnerships through the Lilka Scholarship, a new initiative in collaboration with Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Ukraine, made possible by generous support from the Kronhill Pletka Foundation. The initiative enables students in Ukraine to enroll—for full university credit—in online Yiddish language courses taught by YIVO's distinguished faculty at the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, creating a rare and meaningful exchange between Eastern Europe and North America while strengthening local research, cultural institutions, and public engagement with Jewish history in Ukraine during a time of war.

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Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of Eastern European Jewry worldwide. For over a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our global outreach and enable us to share our vast resources. The YIVO Archives contains more than 24 million original items, and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for such study in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story