U Maryland Yiddish Program Stays Alive, Thanks to Cash Infusion
After fears that the school would have to cancel its classes in Yiddish after this spring’s semester, the University of Maryland has managed to raise enough money to keep the program going at least through 2013.
Maryland offers several courses in Yiddish through the school’s Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, but last year it announced that it may have to cancel the classes due to lack of funding, the University of Maryland Diamondback reported.
The announcement led to a flood of letters from Maryland supporters and alunni, and the center was able to gain permission to seek money from outside donors to keep the program alive.
After raising some $120,000, Maryland will now be able to offer Yiddish classes through the next two years, and could actually grow the program.
Work is now underway to secure funding for the program long-term and is now searching for a professor to take over the classes next year, after the professor who now teaches Yiddish retires.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
