C.c.n.y. May Establish Department in Yiddish

The possibility of establishing a separate course and probably in time a special department in the study of the Yiddish language and literature at the College of the City of New York, was disclosed to a representative of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Dr. Solomon Liptzin, completing this week at the College, a series of lectures on Yiddish which began last September.

The course embraced the history of the beginning of the Yiddish language up to and including the classicists Mendele Moicher Seforim, Sholem Aleichem, S. Frug and others, and was given by Dr. Liptzin in conjunction with the general credit course in comparative European literatures of Russia, Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

Dr. Liptzin said that the course aroused tremendous interest among the eighty students that took it both in the day and evening sessions of the College. Although many of them were school teachers they did not seem to be acquainted with the fact that Yiddish was a language with a scientific basis and that it had an old and modern rich literature. Furnished with this information, the Jewish students declared that the language of their parents greatly gained in their estimation and frequently during the course they expressed their happiness that it brought them nearer to their people, helping them to understand their immediate and distant forebears.

Dr. Liptzin also declared that the faculty at the College is very favorably inclined towards the study of Yiddish and that he hopes to be able to create an independent course in it due to the interest Yiddish aroused at the College and in various academic circles elsewhere. At the same time he expressed surprise that the study of Yiddish has not until now been introduced among the courses of the Linguistic Institute, which are given under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of America, expressing the hope that Yiddish leaders will call this to the attention of the Society.