Lectures, Classes, and Tutoring with Rokhl Kafrissen

Rooster in the Cradle :  A Brief History of the Evil Eye and Yiddish Anti-Demonic Technologies Thursdays, June 11, 18 & 25 at 7pm EST (online) 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 av...

This June I am offering a new leyenkrayz : six short stories from Found Treasures over six weeks.  (Six consecutive Wednesdays starting June 10 at 7pm)  This is really a hybrid- leyenkrayz . Each week we will read the story in English translation ahead of time. I send out the Yiddish text and in class, we read selections from the Yiddish out loud, along with a class discussion of the story in English.  This new leyenkrayz is coming after the success of my first leyenkrayz over April-May. We read the wonderful new translation of Rokhl Faygenberg's 1905 memoir, The Winding Road . Each week we read part of the Yiddish and for week 4, we had a visit from the translator, Tamara Helfer .  This hybrid format turned out to be perfect for Yiddish learners who aren't ready to read an entire Yiddish novel on their own. Reading the English ahead of the Yiddish aids comprehension tremendously. It also allows beginner and intermediate students the opportunity to think about t...