Prior to the Second World War, about 12 million of the world’s 16 to 17 million Jews spoke Yiddish. The Holocaust, which wiped out half of the world’s Yiddish-speaking population, together with Israel’s adoption of Hebrew, reduced the use of the language to fewer than one million Yiddish speakers today. “Knowing the language is essential to understanding the Jewish experience in Europe,” says Carl Amrhein, dean of Arts and Science. A $600,000 gift from Al and Malka Green of Toronto will ensure that the Yiddish language lives on through the Yiddish Studies program at U of T, named in their honour. With this gift the language and literature courses will be funded in perpetuity.
Recent Posts
Mapping the Human Body, One Cell at a Time
U of T scientists have created a cell-by-cell map of the human liver that could increase the success of transplant surgery and lead to new treatments for liver disease
Strange Bedfellows
A growing number of city-dwellers live in condos – and now high schools, theatres and daycares are taking up residence there, too, creating benefits for everyone
Alán Aspuru-Guzik Has Seen the Lab of The Future, and It’s Very, Very Fast
By bringing artificial intelligence into chemistry, Prof. Aspuru-Guzik aims to vastly shrink the time it takes to develop new drugs – and almost everything else
