Faculty
Faculty of 2026
Dr. Yaad Biran
Yaad Biran received his Ph. D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research examines the travels of Yiddish writers to Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. He teaches Yiddish language and literature in Haifa University and in Beth Shalom Aleichem in Tel Aviv.
Biran is a writer and a screenwriter. His short stories collection "Laughing with Lizards" (Hebrew) was published by Zmora- Bitan in 2017. He composes the programs for "Esther's Cabaret" - A Yiddish cabaret born in Beth Shalom Aleichem that plays on different stages in Israel.
Biran is also a licensed tour-guide and the creator of the tours project "Yiddish in the Streets" in which he guides tours in the footsteps of Yiddish culture in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Professor Justin Cammy – Smith College
Justin Cammy holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies from Harvard University.
Cammy has offered lectures on Yiddish literature and culture at our summer program since 2007, and is also a regular faculty member at the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program at the Yiddish Book Center. His translation of Avrom Sutzkever’s memoir of the Vilna Ghetto appeared won the Leviant Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association.
Mr. Eliezer Niborski- University of Lund
Eliezer Niborski was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Paris, France, in a Yiddish speaking family. He studied Mathematics as an undergraduate and a graduate student and spent several years teaching Math in high schools in France. Since 2004, he has lived in Jerusalem, where he takes part in a bibliographical project lead by Beth Shalom Aleichem in conjunction with the National Library of Israel: the Index to Yiddish Periodicals. During the last fifteen years he has regularly participated as a Yiddish teacher in intensive summer programs for Yiddish language and literature, in Tel Aviv, New York , Vilna and Berlin.
Dr. Miriam Trinh - Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Miriam Trinh was born in Poland, grew up in Germany and immigrated to Israel at the age of 19. She completed her undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Yiddish at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, obtained her Master's degree in Yiddish literature at the Universities of Paris-Sorbonne and Strasbourg (France) and her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She has taught Yiddish language and literature at different levels in Paris, Vilna, Strassbourg, Oxford, New York and in Tel Aviv. She held the position of a postdoctoral fellow with the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD in 2014-2015. Her fields of research are Yiddish literature during the Holocaust and the multilingual Jewish literary reaction in Europe to the rise of Nazism. She is currently teaching Yiddish at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is - together with Eliezer Niborski - the founder of YO - Yiddish-Ort, a place for Yiddish and Yiddish Enthusiasts, which is based in Jerusalem and offers worldwide Yiddish online activities.
Dr. Mira Rivka Blum
Mira-Rivka Blum holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis university. She is a seasoned educator and researcher with expertise in cultural anthropology, ethnography, and international education. She has taught Yiddish, Spanish, and ESL, and has experience in grant writing, research design, and community outreach. Blum has worked at various institutions, including The Workers Circle, Yugntruf (Youth for Yiddish), and Brandeis University.
Prof. Rachel Rubinstein - Springfield College, Massachusetts.
Rachel Rubinstein is a Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies. Her research focuses on migration, multilingualism, racial formation and literary nationalism, as well as on pedagogies in the fields of ethnic and race studies. She is the author of Members of the Tribe: Native America in the Jewish Imagination, as well as the co-editor of Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon and most recently, Teaching Jewish American Literature, a volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series.
Prof. Marc Caplan- Heinrich Heine University
Marc Caplan received his PhD in comparative literature from New York University.
He is the author of Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism and How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms.
