Moishele Alfonso was born in Memphis, TN – USA and received his B.A. in German and French from the University of Memphis. He attended the YIVO Summer Program in 2018 and also participated in the Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish Pedagogy Program in 2018-2019, where he was trained to teach with the YBC’s textbook, “In Eynem”. This past summer, Moishele taught a Beginners class and Intermediate Conversation at the YBC’s Steiner Intensive Yiddish Summer Program.

Shane Baker, executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, is one of the most prominent proponents of Yiddish language, culture, and theater in New York today. As an actor, translator, and playwright, he teaches students to apply the skills of the Yiddish stage to their own interpretation of the literature.

Since graduating from Oberlin College in 2018, Sonia Bloom has worked as a museum educator, language tutor and teacher, and translator in New York City, Buenos Aires, and Western Massachusetts. Sonia was the 2021-2022 Yiddish Education and Translation Initiatives fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and continues to work there as a Yiddish Education Specialist, assisting in teacher training, program planning, and activity design. She was a teaching assistant for the YIVO-Weinreich Program in 2021 and the Yiddish Book Center’s Steiner Summer Yiddish Program in 2022 and 2023 and has taught short courses for beginner Yiddish students at Yale University, Amherst College, and the Yiddish Book Center. She also teaches Yiddish to children ages 5-10 at the Kinderland and Workers Circle shules in New York City.

Aaron Alexander is a drummer, who also plays violin and has been an active and committed klezmer musician since 1988, when he first joined The Mazeltones, Seattle's first klezmer band. Aaron has several recordings as a leader featuring his original compositions and arrangements, including Blues for Sparky, Midrash Mish Mosh and The Klez Messengers among others.

Isaac Bleaman is a doctoral student in Linguistics at New York University. His research focuses on variation in how Yiddish is spoken in New York today, both by Hasidim and by Yiddishists. Isaac holds a Master’s degree in Yiddish Studies from Oxford and a Bachelor’s in Linguistics and Comparative Literature from Stanford. In addition to his studies, Isaac writes a biweekly column in the Yiddish Forverts and serves as director of Leyenzal – A Yiddish Literacy Project, an educational nonprofit that commissions Yiddish-language lectures by sought-after teachers and makes them available to view for free online. He has taught beginning and intermediate language students at the Yiddish Farm and has tutored and lectured in Yiddish at various venues.

Ladino paved Mira Rivka Blum’s initial pathway to Yiddishkeit while studying abroad in Spain, but it took ten more years and a doctorate specializing in Turkic languages before she discovered the vibrant and enticing world of Yiddish and Yiddishists.

Sasha Berenstein is a current participant of the Yiddish Book Center's Yiddish Pedagogy Practicum, a klezmer musician, and LGBTQ+ inclusivity activist. She has led workshops for queer and transgender inclusivity in Yiddish pedagogy, while also centering accessibility and identity in Yiddish language instruction.

Baruch Blum is the Yiddish Coordinator at the Workers Circle. He has worked as a Yiddish translator, as the secretary for the League for Yiddish, Inc., and as Yiddish language instructor at the Yiddish Farm.

Yankl-Peretz Blum began teaching himself Yiddish while a college student in California. He’s been on the board of Yugntruf — Youth for Yiddish since 2006 (for several years serving as its chair), and was active in the Yiddish Farm since its founding in 2011. He began teaching Yiddish in 2007. He has taught classes at the Yiddish Farm, YIVO, Workers Circle, Yiddish Summer Weimar, Yidish Ort, Paris Yiddish Center, and Yugntruf. He has an MA in Linguistics from CUNY Graduate Center, and helps develop the website YiddishPOP.com. He speaks Yiddish at home with his wife and two children in Jerusalem, and spends his free time learning languages.

Hanan-Michael Bordin was born in Riga, Latvia in 1958. He repatriated to Israel at the age of twenty. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating with a BA in Hebrew linguistics and MA in Yiddish. After graduation, he stayed at his Alma Mater, where he taught at the Yiddish Department of the Hebrew University for 34 years.

Dovid Braun has taught Yiddish at all levels and at many of the foremost academic Yiddish programs worldwide. He has been a faculty member teaching Yiddish language, Yiddish linguistics, or general linguistics at Harvard University; Hebrew University (Jerusalem); University of Pennsylvania; Hampshire College/Yiddish Book Center; Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw); YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in its summer programs at Columbia University, NYU, and now Bard College; Gratz College; Workmen’s Circle (Boston; NYC). In the general field of Yiddish he has worked as a translator, researcher, dialect/pronunciation coach for performers, presenter on Yiddish-language pedagogy and topics in folklore, and a decipherer of handwritten documents. 

Leyzer Burko is a professional Yiddishist who has taught Yiddish in the YIVO Summer Program and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is at work on a Yiddish Dialect Dictionary (yiddishdialectdictionary.com) which grew out of the research for his dissertation Saving Yiddish: Yiddish Studies and the Language Sciences in America, 1940-1970 (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2019). He edited the volume Mame-loshn by Nahum Stutchkoff, lives in the “Yiddish House” in the Bronx, and performs occasionally on the Yiddish stage.

Matthew “Motl” Didner is the Associate Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.

Annabel (Annie) Gottfried Cohen is a third year PhD Student in Modern Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and a teacher and translator of Yiddish. Alongside her PhD research, which focuses on the interwar Jewish anti-fascist left, Annie also researches the forgotten religious practices of Ashkenazi Jewish women, publishing her translations of Yiddish texts relating to these practices on a website www.pullingatthreads.com.

Naftali Schaechter Ejdelman is a grandson of the late Yiddish professor Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, and has been teaching Yiddish in a variety of formal and informal contexts since he was in high school. He received a Masters Degree in Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and is a licensed teacher in New York and Massachusetts. Naftali helped found the Yiddish Farm Education Center in 2010 and was selected to participate in the ROI Global Community of Jewish Innovators in 2011 and the PresenTense Community Entrepeneur Partnership in 2012. Before founding Yiddish Farm, Naftali worked as a schoolteacher teacher at Beit Rabban and as an environmental educator at the Teva Learning Center and at the Kayam Farm. He was named one of the Jewish Week 36 Under 36 in 2013.

Yiska Ejdelman’s Yiddish journey began on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. After encouraging her Native American students to learn and embrace their ancestral language, Yiska embarked on a Yiddish quest to learn her own “native” language. She studied at Yiddish Farm, YIVO, and has taken private lessons. Yiska married into a Yiddish-speaking family and is now raising two children exclusively in Yiddish. She has used Yiddish professionally as a program coordinator for Yugntruf - Youth for Yiddish, and is one of the founders of Enga Benga Land, a Yiddish-immersion nursery program.

Gennady Estraikh is a Clinical Associate Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Rauch Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at New York University, as well as a staff writer for The Yiddish Daily Forward (Forverts). From 1988-1991, Gennady was Managing Editor of the Moscow-based Yiddish literary monthly Sovetish Heymland. From 1995-2002, he worked at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies and London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Gennady holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and has written and edited over a dozen publications on Yiddish language and culture.