Spooky Season in Yiddish:
October 15, 22, and 29th at 7:00 pm (EST)
As September closes, a Yiddish goth's fancy turns to the strange and unusual.
If perhaps you don't think Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are spooky, you may not be doing them right. I mean, we spend Rosh Hashanah thinking about 99 ways to die if Hashem doesn't write us into the Book of Life. On Yom Kippur we walk around in an approximation of our own burial shrouds!
For my own part, I'm putting together a new class for October, diving into the macabre and darker side of Yiddish. For the first time, I'll be teaching IL Peretz's "Monish" - a cri de coeur for modern Yiddish literature, wherein Peretz proves he can use Yiddish to write about sex and death. Our hero Monish is an innocent Talmud prodigy who is seduced by Satan and his most glamorous companion, Lilith. Ooh la la, as we say af yidish. 
Vos nokh? We'll learn some practical Ashkenazi magic in the form of protective incantations; protections against demons, the Evil Eye, and even wild dogs! We'll find out why you should never go to an empty synagogue after midnight (!!) and what not to do if -- god forbid -- you are buried alive. We're even going to explore some traditional Ashkenazi methods for divination.
If that sounds good to you, please join me on October 15, 22, 29 at 7pm. The cost is $100 and recordings will be available for a month after class. To register, just email me (cjcrokhl at gmail com) and complete payment.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
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