Learn Yiddish In Thailand

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BANGKOK - A new Yiddish program will soon be launched at the Goethe-Institut in Thailand.

Thai students who have successfully completed an advanced German course will be offered the opportunity to learn Ashkenazi language at the institute, which is situated beside the German Embassy in Bangkok.

Net Perra, a student at Ramkhamhaeng University in Bankok, has shown interest in the new course.

“Jews are a wise people,” Perra said, “You have to learn their language and their culture in order to understand them.”

In addition to learning Yiddish, Perra and the other students enrolled in the course will also learn basic concepts of Jewish history and culture. Trips to local kosher restaurants and a visit to the Chabad center in Bangkok are part of the program’s curriculum.

Peter Adowalt, an instructor at the institute, assembled the curriculum after completing his research on Jewish communities in Bangkok, Berlin, and Munich in collaboration with a Muslim instructor at the institute’s Cairo branch.

“Yiddish is very close to German,” Adowalt said, “I chose it to demonstrate to students how a people with no nation for generations developed a language of its own.”