The Inspiration for YiddishPOP

Our Nomi, whose adventures together with Moby introduce learners to the Yiddish language, is named in honor and in memory of Dr. Naomi Prawer Kadar. YiddishPOP builds on Naomi’s work as a language teacher and reflects her deep commitment to the expression and transmission of Yiddish culture in particular and Jewish culture more generally.

Naomi Prawer Kadar (1949–2010) grew up in the Bronx, New York. A child of Holocaust survivors, she absorbed Yiddish language and culture from her family, neighborhood, and the Yiddish supplementary school she attended, Sholem Aleichem Folkshul 45. She moved to Israel as a young adult where she married, started a family, and taught English as a second language in Israeli schools. In 1983 Naomi moved with her young family to the US where she taught Yiddish in schools and synagogues and became director of the Workmen’s Circle supplemental schools. In the 1990s she entered the graduate program in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University from which she graduated in 2007 with a dissertation on the children’s magazines of the secular Yiddish schools in America (published posthumously as a book Raising Secular Jews: Yiddish Schools and Their Periodicals for Children, 1917–1950). Meanwhile, Naomi’s husband Dr. Avraham Kadar had founded BrainPOP, and at the same time as pursuing graduate studies and teaching Yiddish on the university level, Naomi took the pedagogical lead in developing BrainPOP’s innovative program to teach kids English as a second language: BrainPOP ELL.

After Naomi passed away in 2010, her family decided to create a Yiddish language program based on BrainPOP ELL, honoring her memory with a project she herself would very much have wanted to undertake. Naomi’s work informs YiddishPOP through the structure she developed for language learning through BrainPOP ELL:

The use of engaging stories was a hallmark of Naomi’s teaching. She had a knack for writing captivating stories using limited vocabulary and specific grammatical structures. At the beginning of her career, during teacher training at the Hebrew University, she wrote a paper that describes teaching the English past simple tense using a short story with an amusing plot twist. Many years later, she scripted a movie with the very same plot to introduce the simple past in BrainPOP ELL! Students of Yiddish also benefited from this talent. During her time at the Workmen’s Circle she wrote a series of Yiddish lessons for the Workmen’s Circle magazine entitled “So, You Want to Learn Yiddish…” (“Vi azoy zogt men af yiddish…?”), designed to guide the learner through the beginning stages of reading and understanding Yiddish with an emphasis on useful phrases for speaking. At the heart of each lesson is a dialogue that tells a brief story in Naomi’s engaging style showing a small incident in everyday life with an amusing twist at the end.

Besides her skill at teaching language, Naomi brought to her Yiddish classes a web of cultural connections. From her earliest years she was surrounded by Yiddish and Jewish culture thanks both to her parents, Lola and Kiwa Prawer, and to her teacher at Folkshul 45, Esther Codor. Lola and Kiwa, Polish Holocaust survivors, brought with them to America a broad connection to Jewish life that included secular literature and religious tradition, the Yiddish culture of the diaspora and an embrace of the State of Israel. Newly arrived from Europe, however, they had to reestablish themselves without a family network at a time when the broader Jewish community paid little heed to the specific challenges of survivors. The Yiddish supplementary school to which they sent their children, led by the dynamic Esther Codor who sought to involve parents as well as children in the school community, filled some of this gap.

Indeed, in a volume of remembrances published in 1990 after Esther passed away, Naomi wrote that Esther was like a third parent to her, “a partner in my upbringing equal to parents and home, and not ‘just’ a teacher”. The values that Naomi felt Esther instilled in her had a breadth similar to those of her parents: “respect, responsibility, charity, justice, love of the Jewish people, and love of Yiddish”. Among the many activities in Esther’s program – reading, writing, painting, performing, debating – Naomi remembered with special warmth the weekly shabes-tish, or sabbath table with a white tablecloth, “wine” (cherry soda), and challah: “we celebrated shabes and thereby also ‘celebrated’ Yiddish literature, the values of family and table, the values of work and rest, and our connection with all Jews everywhere and at all times”.

After graduating from Folkshul 45 at the age of 12, Naomi remained active in the world of Yiddish culture. Seeing in her a penchant for teaching, Esther offered Naomi her first teaching job, working with the younger kids at Folkshul 45. Meanwhile, Naomi attended mitlshul, a secular Yiddish high school program, and took an active role in the Yiddish youth organization Yugntruf, serving on the editorial board of its journal from 1966–1971. Later, as a Yiddish teacher and academic researcher, her work was informed by the knowledge and experience of Yiddish culture she had acquired in her childhood and youth. She taught Yiddish as a contemporary, living language and one with a rich cultural history. On the one hand, the stories and dialogues she wrote for her students showed ordinary people in everyday situations; on the other, she read texts such as folktales and poems for children even with elementary classes, connecting students with Yiddish literature and cultural history from the very beginning.

Naomi’s participation in Jewish culture was not limited to the world of Yiddish, as she spent years living in Israel and, with her husband, raised her family in Hebrew. Moreover, Jewish tradition was always part of her life. One of the projects she undertook as director of the Workmen’s Circle schools was to create a sabbath program for non-religious families that places traditional observances in a context of cultural connection and social justice (published as Shabbes: A Cultural Jewish Lifestyle Program Guide, 1995). Israel features in some of the stories she wrote for her Yiddish language students. In one memorable dialogue, Malke finds her friend Rokhl packing summer clothes for a winter trip to Israel. She advises Rokhl to take the bathing suit and shorts out of her suitcase and pack a warm hat and umbrella instead. Rokhl expresses her consternation: “Oy-vey, what will be?” And Malke reassures her: “It will be cold, but don’t worry – Israel is always amazing. You’ll have a great time!”

YiddishPOP reflects Naomi’s life and work in many ways, from the model of teaching language through engaging stories, to the teaching of Yiddish both as a language of everyday life and the conduit of a long cultural heritage, the inclusion of general Jewish cultural traditions such as shabes and holidays, and an attitude of fairness and respect in interpersonal (and interrobotic!) relationships. Like Esther Codor, Naomi was not “just” a teacher, and we have striven to make YiddishPOP not “just” a language program, but a gateway to new and broader cultural connections.