This summer I was lucky enough to study Yiddish literature with Dr. Sheva Zucker. Sheva’s Yiddish class is unlike any literature class I have experienced for several reasons. Foremost, Sheva’s total commitment to maintaining a classroom environment where Yiddish is the language of instruction helped familiarize me with Yiddish in a profound way. Sheva does not tolerate any language other than Yiddish being spoken at any point during class, even when students are having discussions amongst themselves. Sheva’s Yiddish is highly idiomatic, allowing students to casually collect all sorts of Yiddish expressions which they can incorporate into their own vocabulary. I left her class feeling like my ability to express myself in Yiddish had improved immensely, my conversations enriched by words and phrases which made my Yiddish more authentic.
Sheva also manages to infuse her discussions of literature with profoundly personal significance. Especially when analyzing texts relating to the Holocaust, Sheva was able to share stories and anecdotes which added a new dimension of depth to the class. She told us about her experiences of survivors and her perspective as a Yiddish speaker living with the legacy of the Holocaust. She quietly but firmly impressed upon us our own responsibility as the next generation of bearers of a language which was once threatened by extermination.
Sheva has a special ability to bring out the humanity in the texts we study. Yiddish literature often stands at the intersection of the tensions and contradictions which characterized life in the shtetl. I found that my knowledge of the Torah helped me understand better the writings of people who lived with holy text as a central part of their lives, and understood themselves and their relationships through the lens of biblical characters. We read several poems by Itzik Manger and others about the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs. In our study of all of these poems, Sheva emphasized the deeply human nature of these characters and their complicated relationships with one another.