Course Submission Form

Instructions: All courses submitted for the Common Core must be liberal arts courses. Courses may be submitted for only one area of the Common Core. All courses must be 3 credits/3 hours unless the college is seeking a waiver for a 4-credit Math or Science course (after having secured approval for sufficient 3-credit/3-hour Math and Science courses). All standard governance procedures for course approval remain in place.

College Kingsborough Community College Course Number Yiddish 30 Course Title Yiddish Literature in Translation l Department(s) Foreign Languages Discipline Language and Literature Subject Area Enter one Subject Area from the attached list. Yiddish Credits 3 Contact Hours 3 Pre-requisites English 12 Mode of Instruction Select only one:

x In-person Hybrid Fully on-line

Course Attribute Select from the following:

Freshman Seminar Honors College Quantitative Reasoning Writing Intensive X Other (specify): Liberal Arts/ Gen Ed

Catalogue Designed for non-Yiddish speaking students, course consideration is on the emergence of Yiddish writers in the Description modern world. Emphasis is on the main literary personalities and their major contributions. All readings and discussions in English.

Syllabus Syllabus must be included with submission, 5 pages max

Waivers for 4-credit Math and Science Courses

All Common Core courses must be 3 credits and 3 hours.

Waivers for 4-credit courses will only be accepted in the required areas of Mathematical and Quantitative Reasoning and Life and Physical Sciences. Such waivers will only be approved after a sufficient number of 3-credit/3-hour math and science courses are approved for these areas.

If you would like to Waiver requested request a waiver please check here: If waiver requested: Please provide a brief explanation for why the course will be 4 credits. If waiver requested: Please indicate whether this course will satisfy a major

1 requirement, and if so, which major requirement(s) the course will fulfill.

Indicate the status of this course being nominated:

x current course revision of current course a new course being proposed

CUNY COMMON CORE Location

Please check below the area of the Common Core for which the course is being submitted. (Select only one.)

Required Flexible English Composition World Cultures and Global Issues Individual and Society Mathematical and Quantitative x US Experience in its Diversity Scientific World Reasoning Creative Expression Life and Physical Sciences

Learning Outcomes

In the left column explain the assignments and course attributes that will address the learning outcomes in the right column.

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II. Flexible Core (18 credits) Six three-credit liberal arts and sciences courses, with at least one course from each of the following five areas and no more than two courses in any discipline or interdisciplinary field.

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B. U.S. Experience in its Diversity

A Flexible Core course must meet the three learning outcomes in the right column.

Students will recognize and have a general knowledge and • Gather, interpret, and assess information from a variety of sources appreciation for the contributions of modern Yiddish writers to US and points of view. experience in its diversity, from the inception of Modern Yiddish Literature in the second half of the nineteenth century until the present. Information is gathered, interpreted and assessed from the textbook, class lectures, supplementary readings of short stories not included in the text, articles on critical thought, contemporary readings in the media, film, and music (Yiddish lyrics). Students’ presentations also include varied points of view.

• Students will be able to determine the point of view, • Evaluate evidence and arguments critically or analytically. values, or intent of instructive material. They will understand the ideologies inherent in the various genres of Yiddish literature gain an understanding for differences in culture and also perceive connections within the subject matter and across disciplines. • Students will be able to analyze and interpret representative writings of Modern Yiddish literary personalities, especially the “classical trio,” the three founding fathers of Modern Yiddish Literature: Mendele Mokher Sefarim (Shalom Yaakov Abramovitsh), Shalom Aleichem (Shalom Rabinovitsh), and L. I. Peretz.; to understand their influence on the US experience and to relate these works to contemporary life today. Thus, while Shalom Aleichem had produced his Tevye series in the United States (adapted for stage and film several times, most famously as Fiddler on the Roof), the literary masterpieces of Mendele and Peretz, who never left European soil, have nevertheless impacted Yiddish theatrical production in the United States and

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have been reworked into modern literary forms in the US. For example, Mendele’s Yiddish novels The Travels of Benjamin III, a picaresque satire that parodies life in the Pale of Settlement, and the romantic novel and social satire, Fishke the Lame, have been translated into English and published by Schocken Books in 1996. Fishke the Lame has been recast into the Yiddish film, “The Light Ahead,” that reflects the artistic peak of American Yiddish film. It is at the same time an attack on shtetl life and a romance of an impoverished couple who yearn for emancipation from the superstitions and corruption of the shtetl. David Opatoshu and Helen Beverly dramatize the characters of Fishke and Hodel, two poor and physically disabled lovers who dream of a new life in Odessa. The film, which was produced in 1939 under the direction of Edgar Ulmer, has been restored by the National Center for Jewish Film and is often viewed on campuses throughout the United States. Students will evaluate themes as abuse and/or vulnerability of women, social morality, effects of poverty and unemployment and relate them to their personal worlds and contemporary life in the US.

Students will analyze “A Night in the Old Marketplace,” the recent adaptation of Peretz’s 1907 play by Grammy award-winning Frank London into a multimedia production that mixes Jewish music, jazz, and world beats. Students will evaluate the combination of profound musings with vaudeville inspired comedy.

• Students will gain knowledge of the major trends that contributed towards the development of Modern Yiddish Literature (Haskalah, Hasidism, Socialism, Anti-Semitism), and which, in turn, generated Yiddish theater and cinema in the United States.

• Students will compare the film “Tevye der Milkhiger” and the latter “Fiddler on the Roof” to the literary work from which it derived.

Students will be able to interpret instructive material, to summarize information accurately, to reduce information into meaningful components for analysis, to perceive and create logical coherence and discernible themes and patterns across different bodies of information. The student will be able to articulate and argue his positions; to • Produce well-reasoned written or oral arguments using evidence to develop his thoughts and perspectives on the reading material, to support conclusions. formulate and understand his own values and to understand

4 others’ values, and to make informed value decisions.

Students will support their conclusions as a result of gaining an understanding of the folk culture, traditions, and tensions of Jewish communities in the shtetls of Poland and the Pale of Settlement; an understanding of the forces that resulted in the disintegration of the shtetl and knowledge of the mores and values of the Jewish immigrant. Thus they will be able to analyze and critique the works that chronicled the cultural heritage of the shtetl and that described the socioeconomic conditions of the Jewish immigrants in America; to relate the subject matter to their personal lives; to react personally to the literature read, and to correlate, synthesize, and integrate the diversity of information and ideas.

A course in this area (II.B) must meet at least three of the additional learning outcomes in the right column. A student will:

Communications and Literature: • Identify and apply the fundamental concepts and methods of a discipline or interdisciplinary field exploring the U.S. experience in its Yiddish theater and film drew from the classics of Yiddish diversity, including, but not limited to, anthropology, communications, cultural studies, economics, history, political science, psychology, literature and has served to artistically express and preserve public affairs, sociology, and U.S. literature. Yiddish classics by masters which included Jacob Gordin, Mendele Mokher Sefirm, Shalom Aleichem, Peretz, Opatoshu, Hirsbein, Pinski, Ansky, Asch, I.J. Singer, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Yiddish film and theater are invaluable not only for their literary value and historical record of the Jews of Eastern Europe but as a record of the mores and values of the immigrants who fled to America. They are invaluable for a statement of their socio-economic problems, their hopes, joys, and disappointments, in particular the realism and horror of the sweatshops and the difficulties of maintaining one’s Jewish identity and ties to the traditional past while striving to acculturate and adjust to the new.

Students will explore “the Golden Era of Yiddish Theatre,” and the importance of the Second Avenue Yiddish theatres for the 3.5 million Jews who settled in the US between 1888 and 1925. They will evaluate the Golden Era of Yiddish Theatre, which refers to the eighteen year career of the reformation and the flowering of the American Yiddish stage by the Russian born American playwright Jacob Gordin(1853-1909),”The Jewish Shakespeare,” who injected the Yiddish theater with realism and naturalism. Students will discuss how he challenged tradition, how he was influenced by Shakespeare (The Jewish King Lear and Mirele Efros- The Jewish Queen Lear), how he entertained theater goers, and how he shaped the way they saw the world. They will discuss the themes of intergenerational estrangement, the manic pursuit of the dollar, the subject of women’s emancipation, and how Gordin impacted the US experience in its diversity not only with his own plays but those that he staged

5 by Shalom Ash, Shalom Aleichem, and Peretz.

Students will assess the cultural importance of the Second Avenue Yiddish theatres for the Jewish immigrant, and the importance to this day of the Folksbine theatre that has staged numerous classics.

Students will become aware of the fact that Yiddish Literature was the basis and the inspiration for theatrical productions that include The Fiddler on the Roof, The Dibbuk, The Tenth Man, Hester Street, and Yentle - productions that continue to reflect the US experience in its diversity.

The Tevye Series by Shalom Aleichem (S. Y. Rabinovitsh, 1859- 1916), especially Havvah, is the basis for Fiddler on the Roof, which surpassed 3,000 performances and was the longest- running Broadway musical for almost a decade.

In studying the Tevye Series, the student will integrate history, sociology, and psychology. He will learn how the political events and social conflicts during the reign of Czar Nicolas ll (1894- 1917) reflected directly and indirectly in the tragedies of Tevye’s daughters; and they will explore why this work has been incredibly popular in the United States and why immigrants of diverse nationalities and ethnic groups in America have identified with Tevye.

The student will examine the psychological effects of poverty and the effects of social trends as social idealism, universalism, assimilation, and anti-Semitism on the immigrant in United States. He will examine the effects of a changing social order on an individual unequipped to deal with modern development and change, and the resultant generational tensions, conflicts and familial disintegration.

In Hester Street, students will continue to explore Jewish life in transition, namely the identity crises suffered by the Jewish American immigrant at the turn of the century. Hester Street, which was recently added to the National Film registry of the Library of Congress is the 1975 film based on Abraham Cahan’s “Yekl: A tale of the New York Ghetto.

Students will read Ansky’s play, The Dybbuk, and view the 1937 Polish production of this work, which is the most atmospheric production of the play. Students will analyze its hasidic gothic themes, and how The Dybbuk has continued to fascinate and challenge the mind. Ranked with post-World War I European masterpieces, The Dibbuk was introduced to New York in 1921 by Maurice Schwartz. Radical reworkings of Ansky’s play were The Tenth Man, which ran 622 performances in the years from 1959-1961, and the recently released movie, “Possession.” In their study of the Dybbuk students will delve into and assess the concept of wandering souls finding redemption. They will assess

6 the belief in gilgul/reincarnation - the mystical belief that because of certain sins a deceased person’s soul must return to the world in another form to expiate that sin, and in the case of a dybbuk, it attaches itself to the soul of a living person.

Students will explore the pivotal questions of faith and the ultimate meaning of the universe, which are strong motifs in the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. In their study of Singer students will evaluate the questioning of the foundations of empirical reality or the conception of language as a creator rather than a mirror of reality, or the definition of evil and exile. Students will evaluate his concept of the demonic in his fiction related not to the idea of sin but to his major them of exile and the problem of meaning in darkness. Reading excerpts of Shadows on the Hudson, students will gain an insight into the tortured psyches of Holocaust survivors living in New York City in 1948, the nihilism and despair that suffocated them because of the trauma of the Holocaust, and their ambivalence towards New York.

On a lighter level, they will analyze his attitude towards gender roles in “Yentle the Yeshiva Boy,” which was adapted for the stage in 1974 and became the basis for a multi-million dollar Hollywood musical produced and directed by Barbara Streisand, who also played the title role.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LABOR UNIONS: This course will • Analyze and explain one or more major themes of U.S. history from provide students with the perspective and depth to analyze the more than one informed perspective. formation of labor unions and to appreciate the contributions of Yiddish writers to the development of labor unions. They will learn that the earliest important group of Yiddish writers in New York was known as “The Sweatshop Poets,” since they responded to the plight of the oppressed immigrants. They will be acquainted with these writers who expressed the suffering of the Jewish worker and summoned him to struggle against his exploiters. The most successful achievements of this poetry were attained mainly in the United States, and included such poets as Morris Rosenfeld, Morris Winchevsky, Abraham Reisen, David Edelstadt, and J. Bovshover. Edelstadt’s poem “In Struggle” (In Kampf), written in 1889, became the hymn of Jewish workers. Abraham Reisen’s poem, “To the Hammer,” became a popular workers’ song both in Europe and in the United States. Di Grine Khuzine by J. Leiserowitz depicts the waning of the beautiful, young immigrant worker and became a most popular song of immigrant life .They will analyze the anthropocentric poetry of H. Leivick (1882-1962), a sweatshop worker himself and a poet who focuses on man and human suffering.

Students will realize that the sculpture below, “The Garment Worker”, commissioned by ILGWU, and on display in front of 555 Seventh Avenue in the Garment District, not only reminds us of the role of the Jewish immigrants in making New York a fashion

7 center, but their role in the formation of the ILGWU itself, which was critical for the labor history of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The study of the career and literary contributions of Abraham Cahan will also enhance the student’s knowledge of socialism. Cahan was editor from 1903-1946 of the socialist Yiddish language newspaper, The Jewish Daily Forward, the most successful non –English newspaper in the US. A member of the Socialist Labor Party of America, he contributed massively to the Yiddish-language socialist propaganda, seeing himself as enlightener of the impoverished Jewish working class of New York

• Evaluate how indigenous populations, slavery, or immigration have shaped the development of the United States. • Explain and evaluate the role of the United States in international relations. • Identify and differentiate among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government and analyze their influence on the development of U.S. democracy. Students will analyze the development and features of Hasidism, • Analyze and discuss common institutions or patterns of life in which is intrinsic to the study of Yiddish Literature. Hasidism is a contemporary U.S. society and how they influence, or are influenced pattern of life, or movement that developed in Eastern Europe by, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, belief, or other during the second half of the eighteenth century, about one forms of social differentiation. hundred years prior to the debut of Modern Yiddish Literature, and has spread throughout Europe and the United States. Since the shtetl is the milieu of much of Yiddish Literature, many characters are Hasidim. (Tevya is a Hasid; the characters in the

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Dybbuk are Hasidim,). On the one hand our modern Yiddish writers conflicted with the traditionalism of Hasidism (especially Mendele Mokehr Sefarim), and, on the other, Hasidim have been romanticized by others, especially by Peretz.

Students will gain an insight into the major attributes of Hasidism:

• Emphasis on mystical concepts/ the interrelation between the earthly and the celestial worlds • Emphasis on emotion and prayer • Belief in the immanence and transcendentalism of God • Mans’ mission of cleaving, or communion with God through prayer • Self-nullification • Joy/optimism • Zaddikism and strong communal affiliation • Sanctification of the mundane • Belief in the Messiah and the return to Zion • Cultural distinction/avoidance of secular infiltration

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