What Students are Saying about Rokhl's Teaching

-
I just received this lovely testimonial from one of my wonderful b'nei mitzvah students. One-on-one teaching has been such an honor and a blessing.

Whether you're 12 or 32, it's always the perfect time to start learning about Ashkenaz and working on your Yiddish. Drop me a line and let's start learning together!

Rokhl seamlessly weaves between pop culture references, cross-cultural religious texts, heady university journal publications, found media footage, and more, in pursuit of helping her students fully appreciate the point she is making. She truly sees me as a student in a rare and special way-- without any kind of judgement. She has a knack for accurately assessing where my current base of knowledge is so that she can meet me at my level and then help me raise the bar. She has a rare teaching strength in assigning homework that genuinely enhances my comprehension of the lessons. 

In Rokhl's classes, I learn not only about fascinating core content-- I feel like I'm also getting a much more intimate understanding of Jewish humor, modeled both by Rokhl's endless quips and wonderfully inclusive tendency to explain the joke if students missed a key cultural reference! 

How fortunate for us that we live in times where we have the ability to hire her for private lessons on everything under the sun, and benefit from her wealth of wisdom on all things Yiddishkeit!  
 
Having done both group lessons and private tutoring with Rokhl, I cannot exhort you strongly enough: give this bitch her flowers (and your money). As a convert, lessons with Rokhl have been by far the greatest and most invaluable investment I've made into nurturing my Jewish soul. 
 -Skye Macrae, adult b’mitzvah student, March-April 2025




Thank you, Skye!!! 💕

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ashkenazi Heritage Tutoring for B'nei Mitsve Students of All Ages

-
Image
About Rokhl ... Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, teacher, playwright, and 2022 winner of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper "Dreaming in Yiddish" prize.  Since 2017, her " Rokhl’s Golden City ” column has appeared monthly in Tablet magazine, covering the length and breadth of Yiddish culture.  For the past two years, she has brought her fan favorite Ashkenazi Folk Magic and Ritual classes to the Yiddish Book Center: “Between Heaven and Earth: Yiddish Women's Folklore, Rituals, & Magic” (Fall, 2023) and "Sacred Time and Liminal Space: Ashkenazi Folk Magic at the Threshold" (Fall, 2024). In 2024, she offered a series of classes on "Everyday Ashkenazi Magic" through the Congress for Jewish Culture . In addition to classes and lectures on Ashkenazi magic, she teaches Yiddish language and culture for private students in a one on one, personally tailored Jewish education experience.   Her Ashkenazi Heritage Tutoring package is a pe...
Read more

Elul is a Spooky Place

-
Image
I present here another piece of spooky Yiddish folklore from the esteemed folklorist YL Cahan. This one has an intriguing Elul connection... 32. About the “Great Minyen” In Hrubeshoyv there was a minyen they called “the great minyen.” The men of the minyen were hidden tsadikim , or saints. Each one of them was a craftsman: tailor, shoemaker, porter, carpenter, blacksmith, and so on. After midnight, they used to meet in the small study house and occupy themselves with the holy Torah. One time they resolved that they must bring Moshiakh.  About this the people were of two minds: some said that one of them had made a mistake with the mystical names of God, and that instead of bringing Moshiakh, they had brought Samoel  [i.e. Satan the accuser or adversary] and thus their own damnation in fire. Others folks said that what happened was that the Baal Shem had found out about them and drove them away, as it wasn’t yet time, and Moshiakh mustn’t come yet.  Even today, people sa...
Read more

Study Yiddish anti-demonic technologies with me!

-
Image
Apotropaic (Anti-Demonic) Technologies in Yiddish   illustration by Rokhl Belief in the Evil Eye has been with us for 5000 years and is found all over the globe. Disease, sudden death, bad luck, sleeplessness, crop failure, and impotence have all been blamed on the power of a malevolent human gaze. Jewish belief in the Evil Eye ( ayin-hore ) appears in core rabbinic texts, as well as in Jewish folk cultures around the world.  If you’ve ever put a red ribbon around a crib, or uttered a  kinehore  ( keyn ayin-hore , Yiddish for “no evil eye”), you have drawn on a rich tradition of apotropaic (anti-demonic) magic that goes back thousands of years. But the history of the Evil Eye, and the Jewish defense against it, goes far beyond red ribbons and kinehores . Indeed, in many shtetls and towns, you could find Jewish men and women who specialized in exorcising the Evil Eye.  Where a specialist wasn’t available, ordinary mothers and fathers often had their own techniq...
Read more