Join our online course Discovering Ashkenaz: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe, and delve into the rich history and culture of the Jews of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania from Medieval times through the Communist Era. 

Over the centuries, despite different languages, religious customs, and geography, the Jewish people have maintained a coherent sense of self – but how has that happened? 

Many of the answers lie in the story of Eastern European Jewry. The legacy of Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe is enormous: from Hasidism to the Jewish Enlightenment, to Yiddish Literature, Modern Hebrew Literature, Zionism, and more.

In this course, you will:

• Explore Jewish relations with peasants and nobility
  
• Compare the rises of Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment
  
• Investigate Yiddish and Hebrew modernism
  

This self-paced course is an intensive, college-level survey, equivalent to two 2-hour sessions per week over six weeks, featuring:

• Online & On-Demand Content
  
• Course Videos & Interactive Quizzes & Activities
  
• Access to YIVO’s unique archive and library collections
  
• A discussion forum to meet up with students and faculty
  
• A special YIVO certificate for those who complete the course
  

Professor Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of the world's leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of Poland. 

Kassow was born in 1946 in a DP-camp in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up speaking Yiddish. Kassow attended the London School of Economics and Princeton University where he earned a PhD in 1976 with a study on students and professors in Tsarist Russia. 

He is widely known for his 2007 book, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has lectured widely worldwide.