Learn Yiddish with the UAJS
Would you like to study the language of the East European Jews to read classical Jewish fiction works, rare documents and newspapers in the original? To restore the connection to the mame-loshn of your grandparents? To learn more about the Yiddish language and culture that are inseparably connected to the history of Ukrainian terrains? To join the Yiddishist community worldwide? If your answer is yes, then these courses are for you.
The classes will be held by Oleksandra Uralova, translator from Yiddish, a research fellow of the Center for Studies of History and Culture of East European Jewry and instructor of Yiddish at the Interdisciplinary Certified Program in Jewish Studies at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2018–2020.
About the instructor
Oleksandra Uralova is a philologist, poet, writer, songwriter, tour guide, translator, and language instructor, as well as a research fellow of the Center for Studies of History and Culture of East European Jewry (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy). Oleksandra has learned Yiddish from prominent Yiddishists from Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Argentina, the US, etc.
Since 2018, Oleksandra teaches Yiddish, currently being a Yiddish instructor of the UAJS Yiddish Project providing Yiddish language lessons for different levels as well as conducting speaking clubs and Yiddish manuscript and typescript deciphering workshop.
Translations from Yiddish into Ukrainian by Oleksandra include Meshiekhs Tsaytn (included as a source publication into vol. 9 (2020) of the Judaica Ukrainica academic journal) and Tevye der Milkhiker by Sholem Aleichem, fragments of Itsik Manger’s works, memoirs of Yosyp Bukhbinder, and a book of essays and testimonies Fun vilner geto and a prose poetry book Griner akvarium. Dertseylungen by Avrom Sutskever.
In 2019, Oleksandra became one of the winners of the Marten Feller and Zhanna Kovba UAJS Book Award for the first complete translation of Sholem Aleichem's novel Tevye der milkhiker / Tevye the Dairyman from Yiddish into Ukrainian (Kyiv: Znannia, 2017).
In February 2022, Oleksandra Uralova received the Sholem Aleichem Award for translating the works by Avrom Sutskever Fun vilner geto and Griner akvarium. Dertseylungen from Yiddish into Ukrainian (published as a volume «Із Віленського гетто. Зелений акваріум. Оповідання» by Dukh I Litera Publishing House, 2020).
