Yankl Krakovsky (b. Atlanta, GA) is a western-Massachusetts-based Yiddishist, educator, and theater artist. They have worked professionally for over a decade as an actor, puppeteer, writer, director, dramaturg, and clown. Yankl’s Yiddish puppet films Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup and In feld faran have screened throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. He is a 2026–2027 Yiddish Book Center pedagogy fellow, a 2026 Meturgeman Translation Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Hasidic Thought, and a field fellow with the Wexler Oral History Project. Yankl is the executive director of the League for Yiddish.

Natalia Krynicka is a teacher, researcher and translator of Yiddish literature. Since 1995 she has worked at the Medem Library in Paris, where she is the chief librarian. She teaches Yiddish language and literature at the Sorbonne, at the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la culture yiddish) and on international seminars in Paris, Strasbourg, Warsaw, Berlin. Her doctorate covers the Polish-Jewish cultural relations in the light of translations from Polish to Yiddish and from Yiddish to Polish in the years 1885-1939.

Avraham Lichtenbaum has been the Executive Director of the IWO Foundation (Institute of Jewish Research) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, since 1994. He has taught Yiddish in New York, Warsaw, Buenos Aires and Vilnius. Avraham is also the lecturer and the author of texts about Jewish history and culture. Avraham was one of the first instructors to lead the Workmen’s Circle online Yiddish program, teaching students from around the world from his office in Buenos Aires.

Zhenya Lopatnik is a singer, composer, author of songs in Yiddish, published writer, and a teacher of everything that is connected to the word “Jewish”. She is a master of informal Jewish education, teaching Jewish culture and traditions to people of all ages.

David Mandelbaum has been producing and acting in experimental theater in New York for over 35 years. He has worked at La Mama, etc., Theater For The New City, The Common Basis Theater and numerous others. In 2007, he and Amy Coleman founded the New Yiddish Rep and premiered its first show, an adaptation of the Holocaust classic, Yosl Rakover Speaks To G-d, which has since been showcased in Montreal, Rome, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Under David’s leadership, the New Yiddish Rep has presented original films, concerts, performance art, and art exhibitions, and has workshopped and developed The Essence: A Yiddish Theater Dim Sum and The Big Bupkis: The Complete Gentile’s Guide to Yiddish Vaudeville.

Alyssa Masor received her PhD in Yiddish studies from Columbia University. Her dissertation was entitled “The Evolution of Literary Neo-Hasidism.” She has taught Yiddish language and literature at Columbia, YIVO, Yeshiva University, and Yiddish Farm. She has published poetry and prose in Yiddish in Forverts Penshaft and Afn Shvel, as well as scholarly articles on Yiddish literature. She gives tours of Hasidic Boro Park and lectures on contemporary Hasidic culture.

Tamara Micner (she/her) is a Yiddish teacher and writer/performer for theatre based in London. She also teaches with Babel's Blessing, and recently completed advanced Yiddish studies at the Paris Yiddish Centre/Medem Bibliotek. She descends from native Yiddish speakers and is thrilled to start teaching with Der Arbeter Ring. @tamarafm www.tamaramicner.com

Lazer Mishulovin is a teacher, writer and translator. He taught Yiddish in Israel, Chicago and New York and created a Yiddish conversation group titled Shmooze and Kvell. Some of his writings appeared in Der AlgemeinerJournal and they range from current events to Jewish and human interest. He translated numerous family letters, diaries and articles, including from Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir, as well as audio testimonies and talmudic lectures. He holds a degree in Jewish Studies and English Literature. He also received training as a language instructor and educator at Hebrew University and served as a Jewish educator at Jewish day schools in North America.

Yitskhok Niborski is a Vice President of the Paris Yiddish Center, and a beloved teacher to numerous students from all over the world. His extensive Yiddish teaching experiences includes courses in Buenos Aires and Paris, where he lives. In the Paris Yiddish Center, Niborski created the Summer University of Yiddish Language and Literature, which has become one of the most important Yiddish learning centers in Europe. He is known throughout the world for his Dictionary of Yiddish words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin.  Niborski has also translated some Spanish works into Yiddish and writes original poetry in Yiddish.

Eugene Orenstein taught Modern Jewish History for 39 years in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University with particular emphasis on the Jewish labor and socialist movement in Eastern Europe and North America and the development of modern Yiddish culture. He is an author of numerous publications including bio-bibliographical studies in Der leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur. (“Biographical Dictionary of Modern Yiddish Literature” Eugene has been teaching Yiddish at various intensive Summer Programs including YIVO and Tel-Aviv.

Elya (Zissel/זיסל) Piazza (they/them) is a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley and a rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Alexandra Polyan holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences) and is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University. Since 2017, she has been teaching Yiddish at the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Summer Yiddish Program (Tel Aviv University). She has also taught Yiddish language and culture in MSU, Project Judaica (Russian State University for the Humanities in cooperation with Jewish Theological Seminary), Eshkolot Project, International Solomon University (Khar’kiv), and in Jewish communities of Riga and Minsk. She served as Moscow correspondent of Forward Yiddish Radio, now she writes for Forward newspaper.

Janie Respitz is a Montreal based Yiddish scholar and entertainer. For the past thirty years she has performed in concerts throughout the world and taught courses relating to Yiddish language, folklore, literature and Eastern European Jewish history, at Queen’s University, McGill University, Cummings Jewish Centre for Seniors and a variety of other learning environments.

Boris Sandler (born in Beltz, Moldova) is a Yiddish language author, journalist, playwright and lyricist and the former editor of the Yiddish edition of the Forward.

Rukhl Schaechter is the Yiddish editor of the online Forward newspaper and host of the YouTube series Yiddish Word of the Day. She also produces Yiddish cooking shows together with Yiddish food scholar and chef Eve Jochnowitz. Working as a Forverts writer and editor since 1998, she has garnered years of experience in writing news articles and personal essays in Yiddish and English, and won a number of Rockower Awards by the American Jewish Press Association.

Robert Moses Shapiro is a professor of East European Jewish History, Holocaust Studies, and Yiddish Language and Literature at Brooklyn College. Although a native Yiddish speaker born in Germany to Polish Jews from Chrzanow and Sosnowiec, Poland, he undertook advanced Yiddish study at YIVO, Columbia University, and Oxford University, as well as numerous Arbeter-Ring intensive online courses. Since Polish Jewry was multi-lingual, Shapiro supplemented his Yiddish with Hebrew, Loshn Koydesh, Polish and German to access the wealth of primary sources in those languages.