Course Instructors

Moishele Alfonso received his BA in German, French, and Italian from the University of Memphis. He attended the YIVO Summer Program in 2018 and participated in the Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish Pedagogy Fellowship (2018–19) and the Yiddish Pedagogy Practicum (2021–22). He has taught Yiddish at the Workers Circle, at the Kadimah in Melbourne, Australia, and at the Yiddish Book Center since 2020. He has also been an instructor at Bossie Dubowick YiddishSchool and the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program. In 2021–2022, Moishele transcribed Isaac Bashevis Singer’s book, Sonim: di geshikhte fun a libe (Enemies: a Love Story) into standardized Yiddish from the orthography used in its original serialized publication in the Forverts in 1966. Moishele’s standardized version was published in 2022 by Olniansky Farlag in Sweden, and is the first time Sonim has ever appeared in book form in Yiddish. When Moishele is not teaching Yiddish, he works in a Yiddish-language daycare in the Bronx. 

Sasha Berenstein (she/they) is a Yiddish teacher, Klezmer musician, and LGBTQ+ inclusivity activist on unceded Duwamish territory in so-called Seattle. She began her work in transgender/queer inclusivity in the Yiddish language with compiling a glossary of Yiddish transgender/nonbinary/gender-neutral terms that can be found on the League for Yiddish's “Words of the Week” page and on Medium, which later became the primary vocabulary source drawn from by the authors of Undzer Mishpokhe: A Queer Yiddish Curriculum Supplement. Since then, Sasha has led related workshops and trainings for inclusivity in Yiddish pedagogy, while continuing Yiddish language instruction centering accessibility and identity for queer, trans, and disabled folks. Sasha is also especially passionate about creating inclusive educational environments for immunocompromised folks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting Yiddish curricula to online formats to meet the needs of the growing demographic of people who can't safely or reliably attend class in person.