Queer Yiddish Camp, a new alternative to summer Yiddish intensives

In the last few years, the Yiddish world has seen initiatives like Yiddish Duolingo, Yiddish Harry Potter and Yiddish TikTok attract new generations of Yiddishists. Starting in May, an online summer Yiddish intensive called Queer Yiddish Camp joins this new wave.

Summer Yiddish intensives, like those run by YIVO and the Yiddish Book Center, hold cultural events, lectures and language classes at all levels. They have been the engines bringing hundreds of students to Yiddish proficiency and cultural appreciation. These programs — some in person and others on Zoom — employ renowned teachers and professors, as well as cultural performers and generally run for around six weeks. Queer Yiddish Camp, held on Zoom, joins these ranks, but without any of the institutional, financial or organizational backing that sustains other such programs, and will run for just two weeks.

The camp’s teachers, each of whom have been key players in the Yiddish world for years, all identify as queer, and include Rivke Margolis, a professor at Monash University in Australia, and Noyekh Barrera, a prominent voice in the Yiddish TikTok world. Ethel Reim, who has taught unaccompanied Yiddish singing around the world for more than a decade, will be among the culture lecturers.

For decades, queer Yiddishists, such as Shane Baker and members of the musical group The Klezmatics, have been instrumental in advancing Yiddish cultural and academic activity. Myra Mniewski, former director of Yiddishist organization Yugntruf- Youth for Yiddish, recalls that, though the Yiddish world has been supported by many queer scholars, cultural activists and writers like Mniewski, the mainstream Yiddish world did not and sometimes continues to not be a place where queerness is celebrated. “I think the queers have been the leaders of our time. They have been in the forefront, and have not brought their queerness to the forefront,” Mniewski said.

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