Helen (Khayele) Beer

Director of Yiddish Studies JMI IFYC

Khayele Beer was born in Melbourne, Australia. Yiddish is her first language. She has been teaching Yiddish since she was seventeen, having completed her Yiddish teaching course at the age of sixteen. She is a founder member of Melbourne Yiddish Youth Theatre.

Beer originally studied English literature and music for her BA in Melbourne. She studied Yiddish literature for her MA at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She became the research assistant to the professor of Yiddish folklore in Jerusalem. She completed her DPhil in Yiddish at the University of Oxford.
Beer taught Yiddish at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and is a veteran of Yiddish intensive Summer courses in Oxford, Brussels and Paris. She is the Course Director of JMI Ot Azoy!, London and also teaches at JMI Klezfest, London.
Apart from teaching, Khayele is called upon for translations from and into Yiddish. She has acted as simultaneous translator for the High Court in London. Most of all, she enjoys creative projects and in 2002, with the help of a JMI Millennium award, she produced the first four-act Yiddish play in London for many years, Jacob Jacobson by Aron Tseitlin, which had three performances at the Bloomsbury Theatre. She is now developing a performance programme of Itsik Manger's Ballads with Israeli musicians.

She is currently William Margulies Lecturer in Yiddish in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, where she teaches Yiddish in Yiddish (not in translation). She produces an annual Yiddish Purim Shpil with students at UCL.

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last modified: 20 April 2004