Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
Dancing My Way Through Yiddish Language and History
by Emily Glass
My journey learning Yiddish has always led me to rich and unexpected experiences, and this past year as an MA student in the Yiddish stream of Germanic Languages and Literatures was no exception. The program enabled me, in a relatively short period of time, to experience and learn about a wide range of disciplines. My passion for languages and literatures was nourished by an elective course in Comparative Literature on Medieval Spanish Literature with Dr. Jill Ross, as well as the core courses of the M.A. program. From the German and Yiddish Studies Seminar and the Yiddish Language Seminar I learned to closely read a variety of texts and use theoretical tools to analyse them.
In the second semester, a course in Second Language Learning at OISE challenged my understanding of language pedagogy. Having completed a B.Ed. in education at Simon Fraser University in 2019 and then taught secondary school French for three and a half years, I had a solid grounding in language education. However, I had never fully immersed myself in the scientific study of how language is learned and most effectively taught. Many things I had previously learned were both problematized and contextualized by the pedagogical studies we read for Dr. Jeffrey Steele’s course.
After spending eight months as a student of languages once again, I thought it would be interesting to apply what I had learned in Dr. Steele’s class to the Yiddish language seminar run by Dr. Anna Shternshis across the academic year. I translated some take-aways on pronunciation learning and teaching and shared these with the seminar participants as a final project. Throughout the year, the Yiddish language seminar proved to be a fruitful place for self-study. In addition to what I had learned in my class at OISE, I was also able to share my research on the study of Yiddish dance as well. The folk-dance tradition of Ashkenazi Jews was something I had been exposed to in Yiddish cultural spaces such as KlezKanada, but my MA was an ideal opportunity to immerse myself in related research and learn from performance and dance studies as well.
My year culminated in a self-organized event at the Centre for Jewish Studies, presenting my research on Yiddish dance in the form of a workshop for the public. The preparation was additionally supported through KlezkKanada’s Mentorship Program to ensure a current and vibrant immersive experience of Yiddish culture. One highlight was the attendance of many individuals involved in Yiddish studies on campus. Everyone involved with Yiddish at the university is engaged and passionate, and I felt supported and celebrated ending my year in such a way. As a teacher and life-long dance hobbyist, sharing my own research in such a setting was the ideal way to bid farewell to a rich and meaningful year.
