Bossie Dubowick YiddishSchool Online: Faculty

Language Faculty:

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 in In eynem online courses 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. Moishele will be teaching the optional Yiddish Alphabet Course on January 3, 4, 10, and 11.

Sonia Bloom received her BA from Oberlin College in 2018, with majors in comparative literature, Hispanic studies, and Latin American studies, along with a concentration in literary translation. She has since worked as a museum educator, language teacher, and translator, and has studied Yiddish language and culture through summer intensives and weekly classes at YIVO, Buenos Aires’s IWO, YAAANA, and the Yiddish Book Center. She was a teaching assistant for the YIVO-Weinreich Program in 2021 and the Yiddish Book Center’s Steiner Summer Yiddish Program in 2022. After completing her year as the Center’s Yiddish Education and Translation Initiatives fellow, Sonia stayed on staff as a Yiddish education specialist, assisting in teacher training, program planning, and activity design. Sonia will be teaching Unit 1 at Bossie Dubowick YiddishSchool Online.

Asya Vaisman Schulman is the director of the Yiddish Language Institute at the Yiddish Book Center. Before joining the Center, Schulman taught Yiddish at Indiana University, where she was also the project manager of AHEYM, the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories. Schulman has taught both extracurricular and for-credit Yiddish courses at Harvard, Columbia, the New York Worker’s Circle, and Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. Schulman holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and a PhD in Yiddish from Harvard. Schulman's PhD research was on the Yiddish songs and singing practices of contemporary Hasidic women. Asya will be teaching Unit 2 at Bossie Dubowick YiddishSchool Online.

Workshop Leaders:

Caleb Sher is the 2023-24 Richard S. Herman Endowed Senior Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center. He holds an interdisciplinary humanities degree from the University of King's College, Halifax, as well as an MA with a certificate in Jewish studies from the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where he received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) scholarship. Following his MA, Caleb began a degree in information studies; however, he left this program to pursue work in the Yiddish realm. Beyond his interest in and (rapidly) growing collection of Yiddish books—the material anchors of Yiddish's literary and cultural history—Caleb gets excited about public humanities, open access to knowledge, and good memes (especially in Yiddish).

Lorin Sklamberg is the lead singer and a founding member of the world-renowned, Grammy Award winning Jewish roots band the Klezmatics. His work can be heard on some 50 CDs, and he also composes and performs for film, dance, stage, and circus, produces recordings, and teaches and lectures from London and Paris to Kiev and St. Petersburg. By day he works as the Sound Archivist for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.