Why Young Jews Love Yiddish

Learning About Learning: A Conversation with Dr. Sandra Fox. Over the last two decades, talk of Yiddish as an alternate path of engaging with Jewishness comes up in the Jewish press almost cyclically—a journalistic evergreen. In this session, historian and Yiddish podcaster Sandra Fox will explain how Yiddish became culturally significant, why young people are flocking to learn Yiddish in larger numbers than ever before, and what the growth of Yiddish says about American Jewish youth culture. More information can be found in her article, “The Passionate Few’: Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present.” Sandra Fox is the Goldstein-Goren Visiting Assistant Professor of American Jewish History at New York University and director of the Archive of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age. Her research interests include American Jewish history, the history of youth and childhood, Yiddish culture, and the history of sexuality. She is the author of “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America” (Stanford University Press).