A A A

HJS News

UCL Festival of the Arts May 7-17

Start: May 7, 2013 1:00:00 PM
End: May 17, 2013 7:30:00 PM
Location: various venues, UCL Bloomsbury Campus More...

Europe and the Holocaust - Shifts in Public Debates in Poland, Germany and the UK


The panel investigates shifts in the role of the Holocaust in European public debates in the recent past. Contrasting developments in Poland, Germany, and Great Britain, we will identify common threads as well as differences in perceiving, presenting, memorizing the mass murder of European Jewries.
More...

Graduate Student Conference: Jewish Spirituality in Eastern Europe

The Yiddish Forverts has recently published a report from the Graduate Student Conference on ‘Jewish Spirituality in Eastern Europe – a Textual Perspective,’ held at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL on 6-7 June, 2012. The article, authored by conference participant Adi Mahalel (Columbia University), is available online on the website of the Forverts: http://yiddish.forward.com/node/4589 More...

New publication: The Russian-Jewish Diaspora and European Culture, 1917-1937


Over a period of three years, the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department at UCL has been cooperating in a research project devoted to 'Cultural Continuitiy in the Diaspora: Paris and Berlin in 1917-1937', based at the Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, and in cooperation with the Centre for European and International Studies at the University of Portsmouth. The project had been funded by the Leverhulme Trust Academic Collaboration-International Network scheme. Among the initiators of the project had been the late John D. Klier. More...

International Graduate Student Conference 2012

The Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UCL is pleased to announce plans for an International Graduate Student Conference, devoted to explorations of multiple aspects of Jewish spirituality in Eastern Europe, to be held on 5th and 6th of June 2012 in London. The conference organizers invite graduate students and recent PhD holders to submit their proposals. We welcome presentations addressing any aspect of the religious history and religious culture of Eastern European Jewry, with an emphasis on their textual products. We are particularly interested in proposals which open up new perspectives and pose new questions regarding conceptual frameworks and traditional definitions used to describe Eastern Europe in the field of Jewish Studies. Topics may include:
More...


View all articles

Donate to the Department by clicking on the button below:

HEBR7515 / HEBRG014 Yiddish Folk Culture

Course code:
 		HEBR7515 Undergraduate and full year Junior Year Abroad (JYA)
HEBR7515A Term 1 JYA students
HEBRG014 Graduate
Tutor:
 		Dr Helen Beer
Mode of assessment:
UG and full year JYA: 2 essays, 3 pieces of coursework and final exam
Term 1 JYA: 1 essay, 3 pieces of coursework and an oral presentation
Graduate: Final exam and coursework
Taught:
In Terms 1 and 2
Classes:
Thursdays, 1100-1300 in Room 321 Foster Court

Syllabus

This course introduces students to a variety of Yiddish folk culture genres including folksongs, folktales, proverbs and sayings, folk remedies, riddles and jokes. The study of Yiddish folklore and its prominent folklorists and ethnographers will be examined. Texts will be in Yiddish.

Study Units

  1. Background to the study of Yiddish Folk Culture
    Definitions of Folklore and Ethnography. The YIVO and its Folklore Section. Observations about earliest collectors of Yiddish folk material, theories and approaches.
  2. The Folksong
  3. The Folktale
  4. Folk Remedies
  5. Shprikhverter un rednsartn/ Proverbs and Sayings
  6. Jokes, Riddles
  7. The Study and Gathering of Folk materials

The practitioners and their work. Sh. Anski's Ethnographic Expedition.

Preliminary Reading / Bibliography (Further Bibliography will be issued upon commencement of the course)

  • Encyclopedia Judaica: Entries on Folklore; YIVO
  • Lucy Dawidowicz, 'The YIVO: The Ministry of Yiddish', Chp 4 in From That Place and Time (NY, London: W.W.Norton and Co., 1989)
  • David E. Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)
  • Itzik Gottesman, Defining the Yiddish Nation: Folklorists of Poland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005)
  • James A. Matisoff, Blessings, Curses, Hopes and Fears (Stanford Univ. Press, 2000)
  • Ruth Rubin, Voices of a People (NY: A.S.Barnes and Co., 1963)
  • Beatrice Silberman Weinreich, ed., Yiddish Folktales (NY: Pantheon/YIVO, 1988)

Assessment

Undergraduates and full year JYA students will have two essays and three pieces of coursework. Plus a final exam.
JYA Term 1 only will have one essay, three pieces of coursework and an oral presentation.
Graduate students have an exam and coursework.
(Details on HJS website)

ESSAY NO 1. 2,500-3,000 words (TOPICS FOR ESSAY NO. 2 WILL BE GIVEN DURING TERM 1)

DUE: Thursday 6 December 2012
Choose ONE of the following essay titles.

1. Compare and contrast 6-10 Yiddish folksongs from one particular genre. Discuss content, style, regionalisms and anything that may help you to define that genre. What is particularly Jewish about the songs you have chosen.

OR

2. Folklorists in their writings often use the words 'oral', 'transmission', 'tradition', 'authentic', 'communal'. Discuss Yiddish folksong in relation to these words. Illustrate your discussion with examples from song texts.

OR

3. Compare and contrast ONE of the Yiddish folktales you have read with one of the tales in Beatrice Weinreich's collection.
Discuss content, theme, narrative style, language, type of tale and the presence of universal and Jewish subjects.