AMHERST – The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst is now accepting applications for its 2015 Great Jewish Books Summer Program for high school students.
This will be the fourth year of the week-long program, which introduces students to a wide range of modern Jewish novelists, poets, and short-story writers. All students accepted to the competitive program receive full scholarships covering the cost of tuition, room and board, books, and special events.
The students spend their mornings in seminar-style classes led by college professors and in small discussion groups. In the afternoon, they can take part in various recreational activities under the supervision of resident advisers from the program—a hike, a sing-along, a visit to a local dairy farm for ice cream—and spend time reading for the next day’s class. In the evening, the students watch films and attend talks by contemporary Jewish writers.
The reading list at Great Jewish Books includes works you would expect to find on a modern Jewish literature syllabus — Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, the basis for Fiddler on the Roof; short stories by contemporary writers such as Philip Roth and Grace Paley — as well as more surprising selections. Last summer, for instance, the students read El Iluminado, Ilan Stavans’ graphic novel about the legacy of crypto-Jews — who pretended to convert to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition but secretly maintained their Jewish faith — in the American southwest. They also met Stavans, who visited the program to lead a lively discussion about the issues raised in his book.
Students in the Great Jewish Books program get a taste of college life by staying at Hampshire College, adjacent to the Yiddish Book Center. Invariably, they carry discussions begun in the classroom back to the dorm and dining hall.
“If we were playing cards, chances are we’d be talking about one of the pieces of literature we’d read, or some aspect of Judaism,” said Emma, a sixteen-year-old from Massachusetts who was one of thirty-six students from across the U.S. and Canada to take part in last summer’s program.
The Great Jewish Books program aims to give students a taste of the richness and variety of modern Jewish literature, said Josh Lambert, the Yiddish Book Center’s academic director. He hopes they leave the program excited to continue exploring modern Jewish literature and Jewish history and prepared to consider the ways they have informed, and continue to inform, the larger American culture.
“We also hope to create a space for people with a shared interest to come together, and particularly to come together around differences,” Lambert said. Students in the program come from diverse backgrounds, including a range of religious affiliations and levels of observance.
The Yiddish Book Center’s 2015 Great Jewish Books Summer Program will take place August 2 to 9. Applications are due by April 1. For more information, visit yiddishbookcenter.org/great-jewish-books.
