Many graduate degree programs, including the Jewish Studies M.A., require second-year proficiency of a language relevant to the student’s research interests. The Borns Jewish Studies Program offers Modern Hebrew and Yiddish courses at the graduate level.

Modern Hebrew 

IU’s Modern Hebrew program has been recognized as one of the best of its kind. With the instruction and guidance of our three Hebrew faculty members, students learn to read, write, and speak Hebrew with proficiency and fluency. Hebrew classes are all conducted immersively in Hebrew, which allows students to acquire the language faster and reach a solid level of understanding, by offering many daily opportunities to speak, read and write in the language, right from the very beginning.

Yiddish

Yiddish is a High German language that has borrowed many words from Hebrew and Slavic and is usually written in Hebrew characters. Yiddish was once widely spoken, chiefly as a vernacular, in eastern European Jewish communities and by emigrants from these communities throughout the world, including in the United States.

Currently, the Borns Jewish Studies Program, in conjunction with the Department of Germanic Studies, offers a number of courses in Yiddish language skills as well as courses on Yiddish culture and Yiddish literature and film in English translation.