The Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies

Organisation profile

The Rena Costa Center is distinguished in Israel and throughout the world for its singular devotion to the academic study of Yiddish language and culture and for its outreach to Israeli schools and the Jewish community at large.

The Center’s home is in the Faculty of Jewish Studies on the Bar-Ilan University campus in Ramat-Gan. The Rena Costa Center’s courses expose hundreds of students to Yiddish poetry and literature, including the works of Mendele Mokher-Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, Y. L. Peretz, Isaac Bashevis-Singer, Abraham Sutzkever, Peretz Markish, the plays of Abraham Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Peretz Hirshbein, as well as Yiddish journalism from its roots in Europe to contemporary New York weekly Forverts, and the Yiddish theatre and cinema.

The Center’s affiliation with Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Jewish Studies (the largest of its kind in the world) offers the unique opportunity for synergy among Yiddish academics and leading Israeli scholars in Jewish history and literature, Bible and Talmud.
The Rena Costa Center is distinguished in Israel and throughout the world for its singular devotion to the academic study of Yiddish language and culture and for its outreach to Israeli schools and the Jewish community at large.

The Center’s home is in the Faculty of Jewish Studies on the Bar-Ilan University campus in Ramat-Gan. The Rena Costa Center’s courses expose hundreds of students to Yiddish poetry and literature, including the works of Mendele Mokher-Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, Y. L. Peretz, Isaac Bashevis-Singer, Abraham Sutzkever, Peretz Markish, the plays of Abraham Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Peretz Hirshbein, as well as Yiddish journalism from its roots in Europe to contemporary New York weekly Forverts, and the Yiddish theatre and cinema.
The Center’s affiliation with Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Jewish Studies (the largest of its kind in the world) offers the unique opportunity for synergy among Yiddish academics and leading Israeli scholars in Jewish history and literature, Bible and Talmud.