Ot Azoy! Yiddish Language and Culture Crash Course

Summer Course 2011
Sunday 14 August – Friday 19 August
SOAS University of London
Vernon Square Campus, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW

The famous JMI immersion in Yiddish Language and Culture for people of all ages and backgrounds – where even complete beginners learn to speak, read and write – even dream in Yiddish in a week. Classes are held at 4 levels, led, as ever by Helen (Khayele) Beer with her popular team of Sonya Pinkusowitz, Heather Valencia and Lily Kahn and with Barry Davis presenting films, Shura Lipovsky and Joanne Borts teaching Yiddish through song.

A very inspiring week with outrageously good teachers and a great variety of good people participating. 

Challenging, emotional, fun, exciting, interesting, absorbing, enjoyable, friendly, culturally grounded, intense, rewarding and fulfilling. 

Very emotional and enriching. A link into the language and culture of my father and of the last/ destroyed culture. Finding spiritual responses to the music that I didn’t know I had. 

I am not at all educated in Judaism. I was even very separated from it. As a first generation child re the war where my parents were murdered. Yet practising seriously Buddhism  for 25 years opened my heart paradoxically to return to Yiddishkeit!

To register for Ot Azoy!, please download and use the 2011 registration form
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Information for participants
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Read what Murray Glickman felt about Ot Azoy! 2010

'I had attended Ot Azoy twice before and enjoyed it immensely both times.  However, I didn’t make it to last year’s course and it was with some trepidation that I booked my place this year.  For one thing, I hadn’t spoken, read or even heard any Yiddish worthy of note for at least eighteen months.  It felt as if whatever Yiddish knowledge I might still have retained was shut away inside a tightly sealed box somewhere in my brain.  Secondly, I certainly did remember, vividly, the frenetic pace of the courses I had attended, and I seriously wondered how well my constitution, now that bit older, would stand up to the strains of the week ...' click here to read more ...

Ot Azoy is an unbelieveable opportunity to begin reading and speaking Yiddish in just one week, opening the doors to a great culture. By the end of the week you will even find yourself dreaming in Yiddish! Whether you are a complete beginner or already an advanced Yiddish student, Ot Azoy!, as well as being hugely enjoyable, will give you the tools to make a solid start and also to progress rapidly.

Book early. (Daily 9.30 - 6.03). To register for Ot Azoy!, please download and use the 2011 registration form

It is with great saddness that we mourn the loss of our dear Pesakh Fiszman, who has been a stalwart of the faculty of Ot Azoy since its inception, who died in January 2009.

Structure of the day

9:30am - 1pm Yiddish language classes - four levels

2:15pm - 6:30pm Conversation, writing, song, films drama

Ot Azoy Faculty

Helen Khayele Beer (Oxford) Ot Azoy! Course Director

Helen Khayele Beer taught Yiddish at the Oxford
Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and is a veteran of Yiddish Intensive Summer Courses in Oxford, Brussels, Paris and is the Course Director of Ot Azoy! London. She is the William Margulies Lecturer in Yiddish, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London. She produces an annual Yiddish Purim Shpil with students at UCL and produced a full length Yiddish play in 2002. She is the Director of Yiddish Studies for the JMI International Forum for Yiddish Culture.

Shura Lipovsky (Amsterdam: Yiddish song)
This is Shura's fourth year as Director of Yiddish song school. She has a an incredible folk voice and when she sings you just cant help smiling - she is very magnetic. Shura is a great teacher, passing on the Yiddish song tradition aurally giving her students a deep insight into Eastern European Jewish song traditions.

Shura Lipovsky is one of the best-known singers of Yiddish song in Europe. She has performed and taught also in Russia, the USA and Canada. She studied singing at the Rotterdam conservatory and she had a folk dance education, after which she specialised in Judaic mysticism and dance. She is widely appreciated for her teaching of the Yiddish song repertoire combined with contextual study of the history and background of the composers and poets. She conducts masterclasses for singers and workshops in Chasidic dances, songs and stories.

Heather Valencia, formerly a lecturer in German, is now an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling . She began studying Yiddish in the mid 1980s and in 1991 completed a doctoral thesis on the poetry of Abraham Sutzkever. She has taught on Yiddish summer programmes in Oxford , Germany and Sweden , and has regular classes in Glasgow and Edinburgh. She has published on Abraham Sutzkever, Yiddish writers in WeimarGermany, and Yiddish writing in London . She edited a bilingual edition of the London Yiddish play The King of Lampedusa and has produced an anthology of Yiddish literature for students entitled Mit groys fargenign / With Great Pleasure. Her English translation of Esther Singer Kreitman's novel Diamonds appeared in 2009. Click here for further details.

Sonia Pinkusowitz (Belgium) is a much loved Ot Azoy! teacher and is one of the most sought after and popular teachers of Yiddish in Europe. A mainstay of Ot Azoy! her teaching is enjoyed by young and old who find her methods extremely engaging and effective.

Barry Davis biog to follow

Lily Kahn has become a regular Ot Azoy! Faculty member, known for her clarity and her ability to make learning Yiddish a lot of fun.

She teaches Yiddish at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London.  She participated in the Yiddish Educator Seminar at Vilnius University in 2005 and has recently taught on the Medem Bibliotek's intensive 3-week Yiddish summer course in Paris. 

In 2002 she appeared in Khayele Beer's production of the Yiddish play Jacob Jacobson and in 2006 she co-produced the UCL Purimshpil.  She has over eight years' language teaching experience including a post at the British Foreign Office.  She is currently completing her PhD research at UCL on the language of Eastern European Jewish fiction.

Joanne Borts is one of New York's favorite theater and cabaret artists with a reputation as a performer of Broadway music and the rich traditions of the Yiddish Theatre.

Ms. Borts has had the good fortune to perform with Neil Sedaka, The Klezmatics, Khevrisa, the Klez Dispensers, the Klezmer Conservatory Band and Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars at such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, The Public Theatre and Carnegie Hall. Her numerous Broadway, off Broadway and tour credits include Fiddler on the Roof with Topol, Cinderella with Eartha Kitt, Funny Girl, Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, and The Golden Land. Joanne recently co-starred with Mike Burstyn in the critically acclaimed On Second Avenue at the Folksbiene Theatre. She is also the director, co-author and co-star of Kids & Yiddish, the highly successful annual off-Broadway family show. Joanne has been a member of the teaching faculty at The Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, KlezKamp and KlezKanada, and has made concert appearances at The Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto and The Monument National Theatre in Montreal. Recording credits include the Milken Archive's Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Only In My Dreams with Deborah Gibson, Mir Trogn A Gezang, and Kids & Yiddish: A Musical Adventure.

Joanne performs the US National Anthem for Major League Soccer, sings lead vocals on a "Folger's" Holiday jingle and proudly serves as Chair for the Center for Social and Economic Justice on the National Executive Board of the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, and on the National Council of Actors' Equity Association.

Polina Shepherd is known for her incredible voice which reaches places that even Heineken cannot, she is also a wondeful arranger and accompanist. She has become indelibly linked to the KlezFest Choir, where musicians and singers alike congregate to shift some seious vocal muscles.

Composer, singer, pianist and the leading choral conductor of Yiddish song in the Former USSR. She has performed and taught internationally. Her specially developed choral teaching methods are based on instrumental ornamentation and Jewish modes. Polina performs with her own a capella ensemble, ‘The Vocal Quartet Ahkenazim’, The Max Pashm Band and works with the Sound & Light Cinematic Duo, who play live accompaniment to rare black and white silent Jewish films. Polina's music is performed by choirs and soloists all over the world.

modified September 1, 2011

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