Resources
Material and Links for Yiddish Students
Dictionary Recommendations &
Downloadable Dictionaries
for All Learners
The Online World of Yiddish!
Links to Recommended Sites for Yiddishists
The Sound of Yiddishland!
Links to Yiddish Music Libraries
For Practicing Listening Skills!
Links to Yiddish Podcasts and Yiddish Ethnographic Material
Dictionaries
Click an Image to Download or Purchase a Dictionary
Weinreich, English-Yiddish,
Yiddish-English Dictionary
Bidirectional. Best dictionary for beginners. OCR optimized PDF for easy searchability. Click on thumbnail to download.
Beinfeld & Bochner, Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary
Unidirectional. Best Yiddish-Engllish dictionary for intermediate and advanced students. Based Yitskhok Niborski's Yiddish-French dictionary. Click on thumbnail to register for online access.
Schaechter-Viswanath,
Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary
Unidirectional. Best English-Yiddish dictionary for intermediate and advanced students. Based on the philological research of Dr. Mordkhe Shaechter. Click on thumbnail to register for online access.
Harkavy, Yiddish-English Dictionary
An older bidirectional dictionary aimed at Yiddish-speaking American immigrants, Harkavy's verterbukh is a cultural curiosity. Note the way English is transliterated in Yiddish in the English-Yiddish part of the book. Spelling in Harkavy's dictionary does not follow the modern standard for Yiddish. Nevertheless, occasionally a word can be found here that doesn't appear in other dictionaries.
Lerman & Niborski, Yiddish-Spanish Dictionary
Excelente diccionario unidireccional. OCR-optimizado para búsqueda. Haga clic en la miniatura para descargar!
Useful Websites
Click an Image to Link to the Online World of Yiddish
The Yiddish Book Center
Website of the Yiddish Book Center, one of the most important Yiddish libraries and cultural centers in the world. The site grants free access to tens of thousands of downloadable Yiddish books, audiobooks, articles, videos, and podcasts.
YIVO
Website of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Browse the site to find online courses on Jewish history, sound recordings, an online museum, and much, much more.
In Geveb
An online journal of Yiddish Studies that contains academic articles, book reviews, and journalism on a vast range of topics.
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
Online version of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe containing almost two-thousand entries on writers, cultural figures, and topics of Jewish interest.
The New York Public Library
Yiddish research guide covering general resources, articles and books, folklore, genealogy, linguistics, literature, music and dance, oral history, theater, film, radio, translation and student resources.
Az me zukht, gefint men!
Website of Professor Dov-Ber Kerler of Indiana University. Contains useful resources on old and modern Yiddish literature and culture.
Spoken Word
Links to Yiddish Podcasts and Ethnography
The Yiddish Voice
A weekly radio show in Yiddish featuring interviews with Jewish Studies scholars and Yiddish cultural figures from across the globe.
Di naye idishe sho
Un programa de radio semanal de la Fundación IWO en Buenos Aires, conducido por Abraham Lichtenbaum. El programa presenta debates en español sobre temas de interés yiddish. Un segmento al final del programa se presenta en yiddish.
Wexler Oral History Project
The Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project is a growing collection of more than 1,200 in-depth video interviews about Yiddish language and culture. Explore features, documentary films, and the full archival collection to learn something new about Jewish history, culture, and identity.
Leyenzal
An online educational resource for readers and intermediate-to-advanced students of Yiddish literature and culture. Visitors to the Leyenzal website can find a library of original Yiddish-language lectures by some of the most sought-after educators, researchers, and activists in the world of Yiddish today.
The Aheym Project
A linguistic and oral history project that includes Yiddish language interviews with approximately 380 people, most of whom were born between the 1900s and the 1930s. The interviews were conducted in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia between 2002 and 2012 by Dov-Ber Kerler and Jeffrey Veidlinger. The interviews include linguistic and dialectological data, oral histories of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, Holocaust testimonials, musical performances (including Yiddish folk songs, liturgical and Hasidic melodies, and macaronic songs), anecdotes, folk narratives, children's ditties, folk remedies, fragments of Purim plays, reflections on contemporary Jewish life in the region, and guided tours by local residents of sites of Jewish memory in the region. A book based on this project was published by Jeffrey Veidlinger in 2013, "In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine."
Music
Links to Yiddish Music Libraries
The Yiddish Song of the Week
An ethnomusicological project by Itzik Gottesman, the Yiddish Song of the Week is a treasure trove of Jewish folk music. Each recording is accompanied by a scholarly commentary, a Yiddish transcription, and a Romanized transliteration.
The National Sound Archives
The National Library of Israel's music library. Browse this site to discover a world of Jewish music, from Europe to the Middle East and beyond.
Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive
This site requires you to register for an account. Type "Yiddish" into the search bar and see what comes up!