Intro to Mama-Loshen or How to Talk Yiddish

The Clinic will open Wednesdays, 12–1 pm, beginning October 14th, under the supervision of Maven-in-Charge Jordan Brown Beyhan, offering support for all kinds of Yiddish speakers and students.
If you are just starting out, sign up for a Crash Course bundle (either the first four sessions only, or all seven) to join a cohort of fellow beginners.

If you can already talk some Yiddish (and please be prepared to send a brief sample recording), please feel free to sign up for individual sessions or (at a discounted rate) for several at once.
The Maven invites you to join a lively community of students where the goal is to learn to speak Yiddish so that people will listen—and even (if they have your luck) understand!—without the stress of rote memorization, grammar drills, demerits for English, or any of the other trappings of your high school French class. Soon enough, you will mirtseshem (God willing) become a pillar of our ever-growing weekly Yiddish circle!

Come not only to learn to communicate well in Yiddish, but also to learn what Yiddish is especially good for communicating—from "blessings, curses, hopes, and fears" (in the words of UC Berkeley linguist James Matisoff) to cleverly updated ancient proverbs, from Talmud-ish philosophizing to folk life in the lands of Eastern Europe. And, for dessert, sample the vibrant fruits of modern art and culture that flourish on the sturdy branches of the Yiddish world!

Indeed, we will emphasize not only creating sentences, but creativity broadly: one of the joys of learning a new language is the discovery of new creative possibilities. Hopefully, you will leave this course with the confidence to take hold of your own place in the wide (and always multilingual) world of Yiddish today, a chance everyone who wants it should have. As we say: Yidish ret zikh — Yiddish speaks itself!