Yiddish Hoyz
“Lomir zikh oyslebn”


Speaking a language together is like musical improvisation – spontaneous, collaborative communication – and good improvisation requires practice and experience. Sadly, there’s no easy flight to Yiddishland, and few chances for new speakers to be surrounded by the language they have learned in class.

Yiddish Hoyz, a new project of Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW), is an immersive Yiddish-speaking space where conversational speakers (intermediate or above) will live in the language for one or two weeks during the festival, cooking and eating together, playing games, watching Yiddish films, and simply hanging out in Yiddish. This will complement and deepen the learning of our classroom language programs. Hoyz-mates will discover and fill gaps in their vocabulary and grammar (vi zogt men “hot tub”?), create new Weimar Yiddish slang, and quickly become more confident speakers by chatting with new friends.

Like Yiddishland, Yiddish Hoyz moves around. In this first year, we will be in three locations.
Week 1 begins in an exclusive house in a village just outside Weimar, which we’re calling the Datshe, and ends with two nights in town at Hotel Leybl (our affectionate Yiddish name for the four-star Leonardo Hotel).
In Week 2, which is YSW’s 25th anniversary Festival Week, we will be living at the Gortnhoyz, located on the campus of the European Youth Education Center (EJBW) between two huge parks, just across a bridge from Weimar’s City Palace and the Old Town.

Hoyz-mates commit to speaking Yiddish exclusively at home and on the grounds of the Datshe and the Gortnhoyz. However, Yiddish has always existed in multilingual contexts, and of course you can still speak other languages around Weimar as appropriate.

After our group breakfast, your schedule is up to you. While living in the Hoyz, you can choose to take one of the YSW music or dance workshops (not included), attend concerts and other cultural events, explore the city and the region, do some remote work on your laptop, or spend festival week immersed in Yiddish culture with the free mini-workshops at the Other Music Academy: singing, dancing, reading, and chatting with the larger YSW community. The program ends on the 17th with a grand public celebration of the festival’s 25th anniversary.

Spaces are limited – early registration is strongly encouraged. We expect 8-10 Hoyz-mates to participate each week.

Initiator and coordinator: Jake Schneider, Yiddish poet and founding coordinator of Shmues un Vayn, Berlin’s Yiddish-speaking social club.

Hoyz-mates can sign up for one or both weeks:

Week 1: 3-10 August 2025 (7 nights)
“Oyf datshe biz shabes”: €420 per person

We will spend the first five days at our own private datshe in the village of Gaberndorf, in the hills outside Weimar (20 minutes by bus), then move into town to the four-star Leonardo Hotel (aka Leybl), where we’ll celebrate shabes with the wider YSW community at Friday’s Shtim fun Harts evening and the Saturday night dance ball.

Week 1 is ideal for those seeking maximum immersion: you can easily speak Yiddish all week if you want, and we will plan all sorts of informal activities together in the Datshe and the countryside such as barbecues, nature walks, movie nights, games, and more. There’s even a hot tub!




Please note that most Hoyz-mates will be sharing rooms with one other participant at the Datshe (room assignments to be negotiated) and we will all share the house with a friendly, hypoallergenic dog named Oscar who is also practicing the language.

At Hotel Leybl, we will eat hotel breakfast together and spend the day in Weimar as we wish.

What does the price cover?
Accommodation (shared room at the Datshe, private single at Hotel Leybl), catered vegetarian lunches (available either at the Datshe or at the Other Music Academy in Weimar), and hotel breakfast on the weekend. We will divide the cost of groceries separately. The kitchen will be vegetarian but not strictly kosher.
The League for Yiddish has sponsored free access to the online dictionaries englishyiddishdictionary.com and verterbukh.org for all Hoyz-mates during their stay, so you can look up words on your phone whenever you need them. It is possible to combine the Yiddish Hoyz with one of the dance or music workshops that week if you sign up separately.

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Week 2: 10-18 August 2025 (8 nights)
“Oyf der yidisher gas”: €420 per person

Week 2 is Yiddish Summer Weimar’s 25th anniversary festival week, so the Hoyz-mates will have a full calendar of Yiddish culture and will spend much less time at home.

At the Gortnhoyz, we will speak Yiddish at breakfast and a group gathering every morning. Then a group of us will take the scenic walk to the Other Music Academy (OMA), which is hosting free mini-workshops on Yiddish culture every day: singing, dancing, instrumental music, reading Yiddish poetry, plus a daily Yiddish-speaking hang-out with games and other activities. Your registration also includes lunch at the OMA, where we will establish a Yiddish-speaking table for the week.
The festival week program also includes a series of film screenings about Yiddish music, concerts every evening, and the Late Night Cabaret, an open mic where you are welcome to perform. You can decide for yourself how much or little to attend.

The week will conclude with an all-star anniversary concert of Yiddish musicians, performers, and ensembles on Weimar’s Marktplatz square. We will say a tearful zay gezunt to Yiddish Hoyz the next day at check-out.


Mini-Workshops in the Festival Week


What does the price cover?
A private single room, breakfast at the Gortnhoyz, and catered vegetarian lunches at the OMA (with vegan options). The Gortnhoyz unfortunately does not have kitchens for our use. Affordable catered dinners are also available at the OMA or concert venue on request.
The League for Yiddish has sponsored free access to the online dictionaries englishyiddishdictionary.com and verterbukh.org for all Hoyz-mates during their stay, so you can look up words on your phone whenever you need them. The mini-workshops at the OMA are free, but concert tickets are not included. You may combine Yiddish Hoyz with one of the workshops that week, although you would miss most of our group activities.

Application process

The application process is simple. Simply record a 3-5 minute unscripted voice message in Yiddish introducing yourself and explaining why you want to be a Hoyz-mate. Don’t worry about mistakes, which we all make – the point is to make sure you are ready for this kind of immersion. If you prefer, we can schedule a Zoom or phone call instead.

>> Registration

Thank you for your patience as we set up this groundbreaking program in its very first year.