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Who We Are

Meet the team at the League for Yiddish

Board and staff members from diverse personal and professional backgrounds sharing a passion for the Yiddish language and the mission of the League for Yiddish

Board of Directors

Professional Staff

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath
Board Chair

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath is co-editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary and the Yiddish-language editor of Afn Shvel. She edited Mordkhe Schaechter’s Yiddish II, among other Yiddish textbooks and terminological works. A Yiddish poet, she has published her poetry in books and magazines, and in 2003 published a bilingual volume, Plutsemdiker Regn/Sudden Rain.  Her poetry can be heard in her own voice at Lyrik Line. Gitl has devoted her life to promoting Yiddish as a living language. Her three children, as well as her grandchildren, are fluent in Yiddish.

Dr. Isaac L. Bleaman

Dr. Isaac L. Bleaman

Dr. Isaac L. Bleaman is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and directs the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe (yiddishcorpus.org). His research focuses on sociolinguistic variation within and across Yiddish-speaking communities. He received his PhD in Linguistics from New York University in 2018 and his Master’s in Yiddish Studies from the University of Oxford in 2013. He has taught Yiddish at the YIVO Summer Program, the Workers Circle in New York, and the Yiddish Farm. Bleaman is a member of the Board of Directors of the League for Yiddish and the Editorial Board of Afn Shvel.

Mark David (מאיר) (Meyer)

Mark David (מאיר) (Meyer)

Mark David is a computing professional who has developed advanced software for artificial intelligence, natural language understanding systems and new database technology. As moderator of the Understanding Yiddish Information Processing (UYIP) listserv, Mark shares resources on writing and processing computerized Yiddish text. He also hosts and produces Boston’s all-Yiddish weekly, hour-long “Yiddish Voice/Dos yidishe kol” radio show featuring music, poetry, comedy, interviews and news.

Jeremy Simcha Garber

Jeremy Simcha Garber

Jeremy (Yermiye-Simkhe) Garber is a retired legal ethics attorney.  An editor and Jewish educator, he is co-author of the introduction to Blood Libel: The Life and Memory of Mendel Beilis (2011), the first complete English translation of Beilis’ Yiddish memoirs, Di Geshikhte fun Mayne Leydn. 

Dr. Paul Glasser

Dr. Paul Glasser

Dr. Paul (Hershl) Glasser is a Yiddish linguist, lexicographer and translator. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary (2016; 2021), and edited the English translation of Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language (2008). Paul is former Dean of the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at YIVO, and has served on the editorial boards of, and published in, numerous Yiddish and other publications devoted to Yiddish language. 

Dr. Itzik Gottesman

Dr. Itzik Gottesman

Dr. Itzik Gottesman is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Texas in Austin. He has a Ph.D in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught Yiddish language, culture and folklore  at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas in Austin. He is completing a website to make accessible his 700 cassette recordings of Yiddish culture in New York City. From 2000 to 2013 he was the associate editor of the Yiddish newspaper, Forverts. He is the author of the book Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland (2003). Since 2010 he has directed a blog “Yiddish Song Of The Week” featuring rare Yiddish folksong recordings (https://yiddishsong.wordpress.com/).

Dr. Cecile ‭Esther Kuznitz

Dr. Cecile ‭Esther Kuznitz

Dr. Cecile Esther (Tsirl Ester) Kuznitz is Associate Professor of History and Patricia Ross Weis ’52 Chair in Jewish History and Culture at Bard College, and the longtime director of its Jewish Studies Program. She is the author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (2014). Cecile is currently working on the topic of Jewish urban history and a study of Jewish affordable housing projects in Eastern Europe.

Elliott Palevsky

Elliott Palevsky

Elliott (Elye) Palevsky is the active CEO Emeritus of River Garden Senior Services, which he developed in Jacksonville, FL. The child of Yiddish-speaking WWII partisan fighters in the woods near Vilna, he has taught Yiddish language, literature and culture at the Yiddish Institute (Vilnius University), Queens College, CUNY, and Worker’s Circle and Sholem Aleichem Schools of New York. He also served as cultural director of Camp Hemshekh. 



Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is a poet, writer, and translator of Yiddish literature into English. He is the author of two books of fiction and six volumes of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). His recent translations from the Yiddish include Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel by Ida Maze (2022) and Blessed Hands: Stories by Frume Halpern (2023). Please visit his website.

Arun (Arele) Viswanath

Arun (Arele) Viswanath

Arele Viswanath is a lover of Yiddish language and song. A translator of books, primarily from English to Yiddish, for children and teens, Arele is the authorized Yiddish translator of the popular Harry Potter series. He is also a musician and performs at Yiddish events, both formal and informal. Arele works in tech, specializing in product strategy and growth, in New York City.

Adam Whiteman

Adam Whiteman

Adam Whiteman, a municipal and project finance specialist, is Infrastructure Advisor for the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Technical Assistance, working on projects in Ukraine and India. He is also a papercut artist, whose work has been featured on YouTube and CD’s and in a variety of print media. Adam’s daughters and grandchildren also speak Yiddish, carrying on his deep commitment to ensuring the vitality of the language.  

Eli Benedict

Eli Benedict
Program and Outreach Director

Eli Benedict organizes and manages the League’s outreach and engagement programs bringing contemporary Yiddish culture to our global community. He is a researcher, performing artist and activist for Yiddish, who grew up in a Hasidic community in Israel and studied in yeshivas and kollels. Eli is a volunteer manager of “Yung Yidish,” the Yiddish Museum in Tel Aviv, and a member of University College London’s research team studying Hasidic Yiddish.



Yankl Salant

Yankl Salant
Art Director

Yankl Salant oversees the visual presence of the League for Yiddish, designs the majority of its publications and has served as its webmaster until 2025. He is currently the translation editor for White Goat Press, the imprint of the Yiddish Book Center and, independently, was the translation editor and a translator for Oyfn Sheydveg (2023). Yankl also specializes in translating handwritten documents from Yiddish to English, Spanish and Italian. An associate editor of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (2013), he was bibliographic editor and a translator for the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (2008).

Dr. Miriam Trinh

Dr. Miriam Trinh
Editor-in-Chief, Afn Shvel

Dr. Miriam Trinh is Lecturer in Yiddish language and literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Born in Poland and raised in Germany, she has taught in intensive Yiddish language programs and workshops in Tel Aviv, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Oxford, Strasbourg, Vilna, Toronto, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Stockholm.  In 2018 she and her husband Eliezer Niborski co-created the YO – Yidish-Ort (Yes – Yiddish Center), a new Israel-based center for Yiddish culture offering in-person local and on-line global activities. They are raising their four children in Yiddish.