Ben Thorne

Ben Thorne received a scholarship from the Department of Jewish Studies for this summer to study Yiddish at IU as part of a program run by the Summer Workshop in Slavic and East European Languages in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The competition for one of the fifteen positions in this demanding workshop, devoted towards gaining a reading proficiency of Yiddish for Holocaust-related research, was very intense and Ben was one of only two IU students who were accepted. The participants are a mix of established professors and graduate students, and it is a unique opportunity for those who work on the Holocaust and wish to gain knowledge of one the most tragic cultural losses of Europe. Ben explains that "participating in the summer Yiddish program is an excellent opportunity because Yiddish was a very important language among the newly-incorporated Jewish communities of interwar Romania, and so, in order to understand the histories of these communities (primarily in Bukovina and Bessarabia) knowing Yiddish is essential."