(JEWISH GROUP) 'If Yiddish isn't safe at Brandeis, where is it safe?'

During a lull in the middle of a summertime shift at Jersey Mike’s, Ian Jacobs, a rising senior and linguistics major at Brandeis University, stepped into the back room to check his phone and found his Yiddish class WhatsApp group erupting; word had it that the Yiddish program at Brandeis was officially ending.

“I definitely felt my heart drop through the floor, followed immediately by my stomach and other vital organs,” Jacobs told me. “I was just like, ‘Wow, this is godawful.’”

Jacobs and his classmates immediately sprang into action. “We were all like, OK, we’re gonna start emailing parents, texting every Yiddishist that we know, and alumni, et cetera, and see if we can get a campaign going to save the Yiddish program,’” he said.

As of now, their efforts haven’t succeeded. Citing financial stress and low classroom enrollment of approximately eight students per class, Brandeis is set to put its Yiddish program “on hiatus” at the end of next year, when the students already enrolled in Yiddish will graduate, and Ellen Kellman, Brandeis’ sole Yiddish professor for almost 30 years, will likely lose her job.

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