These books represent a sampling of the many primers from the Yiddish Book Center's collection. In the 1920's, primers were designed to teach reading and writing to children who spoke Yiddish at home; later, Yiddish was mostly a second language. While styles of illustration changed with the times, what remained constant was the ingenuity of the authors in transmitting Yiddish to the next generation.
Yiddish Primers
Yiddish for Beginners, New York, 1982
Idish far onfanger (Yiddish for Beginners), New York 1930
Dos Yidishe vort (The Yiddish World), New York 1947
Yidishe geshikhte (Jewish History), New York, 1946
Der onfanger (The Beginner), New York, 1922
You can cut and paste the Yiddish titles that appear under each image to find the full text in our Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library.
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