"Oba! Hoje tem aula de Yiddish!"
"Yay! We have Yiddish class today!"

That's what children say when they walk into their school in Rio de Janeiro and find out it's Yiddish workshop day.

In Brazil.

For ten years, Viver com Yiddish (Lebn far Yiddish) has been making something remarkable happen at a Jewish school in Rio: hundreds of children are growing up singing Yiddish songs, hearing Yiddish stories, and carrying the language with joy, curiosity, and love.

✨️ And we need your help to keep growing.

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What we've built, and how

Since 2017, Viver com Yiddish has run monthly Yiddish workshops at Eliezer Max School, growing year by year to reach every class from pre-school through fifth grade, ages four to eleven.

Today, our team includes 10 Yiddish educators.

Musicians, storytellers, and literacy specialists. More than 500 children have participated in at least a full year of the program, and around 250 families have been part of this journey.

No two workshops are alike.

Musicians teach songs and prepare children for choral performances. Storytellers bring Yiddish literature to life through hands-on literacy activities. Month after month, the work reaches beyond the children to their teachers, their families, and the school community, who learn the songs and stories alongside them.

Beyond Eliezer Max, we have brought one-time Yiddish workshops to other Jewish schools and associations: ASA (Associação Sholem Aleichem), Liessin School, and TTH-Barilan School. We also lead annual workshops in Yiddish for teenagers at Corcovado, a German bilingual school, as part of a language seminar.

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What we need

So far, everything has been built with small grants, the goodwill of friends, and the institutional support of Eliezer Max School.
Every member of our team holds a full-time job elsewhere and still finds the time to make this work happen.

We’ve done more than most programs, even without significant funding. But we've reached the limit of what volunteer hours alone can sustain.
The foundation is here.
✨️ Now we need the resources to expand, grow stronger, and make this last.

Two priorities:

1. DEDICATED PART-TIME STAFF.

All the invisible work between workshops — coordination, communication, curriculum development, outreach — runs on volunteer hours, spread across the team. We need to change that. We will hire:

• Program Manager
  to lead the workshops day to day: managing school relationships, scheduling, logistics, communications, and team coordination.
  
  
• Project Associate
  to support curriculum development, bring in new ideas, and keep the program connected to its community.

Both positions are part-time, for the duration of the school year.
A modest start, but it will make an enormous difference.

2. THE YIDDISH EDUCATORS FELLOWSHIP.

We want to train the next generation of Yiddish educators for children: people who can bring this work to more kids, more schools, and more communities. The fellowship is a one-year program. Each fellow receives:

• Yiddish language courses at PUC-Rio, placed at their own level — from complete beginner through advanced conversation and reading circles
  
  
• Hands-on workshop training, two full school days per month at the children's workshops, plus collective planning and preparation sessions
  
  
• Curriculum work in their area of expertise: adapting stories, arranging music, designing materials
  
  
• Mentorship with Sonia Kramer, who spent over 30 years coordinating the Early Childhood Educators Specialization at PUC-Rio, one of Brazil's most respected programs in early childhood teacher education
  

This is not a passive scholarship: it's a personal, hands-on apprenticeship inside a working program.
We will launch with 3 fellows in the first cohort.

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Why it matters, in their own words

"The monthly workshops are awaited with enthusiasm and experienced with joy by the children, who listen attentively and curiously to the stories, and dance with delight to the beautiful songs of the Yiddish tradition. At the end of each school event, it's common to see parents, grandparents and teachers giving thanks — with eyes full of tears and voices full of emotion — for the chance to be part of those moments of rediscovering the best of Yiddishkait."

Thelma Polon, Principal, Escola Eliezer Max

"My mother told me that every time I hear a Yiddish story or song, I should remember to sing it to my great-grandfather. And he gets emotional."
5th grader, during a music workshop

— Why do we learn Yiddish?, the teacher asked. 5th graders answered:
"So we don't forget the language", "To keep the tradition alive", "Because the language comes from our ancestors", "Because we fought to preserve Yiddish".

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Our goal: $20,000

This is our first time asking, directly, from beyond Brazil.

We are grateful for every dollar, and for every person who shares this campaign with someone who cares about Yiddish, and about passing Yiddishkeyt to the next generation, with its living, singing, dancing, laughing presence in the world. If we exceed our goal, every extra dollar expands our fellowship program and reaches more children.

🇺🇸 Tax-deductible in the US. Your donation is processed by our fiscal sponsor, the Congress for Jewish Culture, an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) charitable organization (EIN: 13-1677406). Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law, and you'll receive a receipt by email.

What your gift makes happen

• $36 covers materials for a workshop day
• $180 covers one week of program coordination
• $360 funds a year of online Yiddish courses for one fellow
• $720 covers a month of work from one of our part-time staff
• $1,260 sponsors a complete one-year fellowship for one educator
• $3,600 launches our first fellowship cohort of three educators

Donors will receive updates on what your gift made possible, with photos, videos, and stories from the workshops.

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A message from Sonia, our founder

"

I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. I grew up speaking, reading, and writing Yiddish: with my family, with their friends, and at the Scholem Aleichem school. I began this project in 2016, inspired above all by what I had encountered in the United States: the organizations, the initiatives, the people who had dedicated themselves to keeping Yiddish alive.

Viver com Yiddish goals? To spread Yiddish among the youngest generations. To evoke the memory of the families who carried this language and culture in their luggage when they migrated to Brazil. To give children the chance to know and fall in love with Yiddish songs, stories, and expressions: to sing, to dance, to play, to learn. To build a space where affection for this language can take root. To make Jewish schools understand that Yiddish is not a footnote. It is part of who we are. To resist its disappearance. To contribute to its continuation.

Ten years later, we are reaching out to ask for your support.
Because what we have built deserves to last.
And because Yiddish, in the hands and voices of children in Rio de Janeiro, is very much alive.

Sonia Kramer

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What Viver com Yiddish has built over 10 years is special.

It's not a language immersion program; it's a living encounter with Yiddish.

Through music, stories, and a curriculum unlike any other, we invite children to feel this language, to carry a memory of it, to discover that it belongs to them too. We plant seeds, and we want to train more people to plant them with us.

Thank you for being part of this.

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Get in touch
✉️ vivercomyiddish@gmail.com

Learn more
🌐 vivercomyiddish.com.br

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We are grateful to the Congress for Jewish Culture, a longtime partner in our work that now stands with us as our fiscal sponsor for this campaign. 

Our deepest gratitude to the Aaron and Sonia Fishman Foundation for Yiddish Culture for recognizing the value of this work early on. Their contributions in 2019 and 2020 helped consolidate the project and sustain it through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We extend our gratitude to Nicolai Borodulin and The Workers Circle for years of friendship and generosity that have enriched Sonia and members of our team in their Yiddish learning journeys.

And a special thank-you to Alex Minkin and Ticun Brasil for the encouragement, ideas, and guidance that helped bring this campaign to life.