[NFBJ] Yiddish braille

Tue Sep 15 19:50:10 UTC 2026

JBI has some Yiddish books that were transcribed by Edie Goldman. None appear to be designed for people to learn Yiddish.

Sarah Blake LaRose, D.Min.
sarah at sarahblakelarose.com
http://www.sarahblakelarose.com

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBJ <nfbj-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of mlevy--- via NFBJ
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 3:36 PM
To: NFB in Judaism <nfbj at nfbnet.org>
Cc: mlevy at verse-onality.com
Subject: Re: [NFBJ] Yiddish braille

AS far as I know,

INKPRINT yYIDDISH is written with Hebrew letters only.  JBI might have info on this.  

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBJ <nfbj-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Andre Zelvin via NFBJ
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 2:03 PM
To: in Judaism NFB <nfbj at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Andre Zelvin <l.andre.zelvin at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NFBJ] Yiddish braille

There is no accessible Yiddish textbook, at least not in the US. Might Israel have one? There are a few books that cover Yiddish in some way in Bookshare, like one called Colloquial Yiddish but the actual Yiddish is just rendered graphically. I tried looking for somewhere that just taught conversational Yiddish as I thought trying to get access to a textbook was just too big a project, and then there wouldn’t be anything accessible to read anyway, but I couldn’t find a single learning source that taught Yiddish without textbook and a teacher writing on whiteboards oor something like that.  That’s what I would like to find. I guess it would be useful if someone teaching did interact with the spelling of words, so one could take notes, but I don’t think getting a textbook is happening any time soon.

On Sep 15, 2026, at 1:06 PM, Daveed Mandell via NFBJ <nfbj at nfbnet.org> wrote:

A gentleman here in Berkeley is offering to teach Yiddish. He wants to know at what level people would like to learn, how much experience people have already had with the language. He would like people to acquire a textbook from the Yiddish Book Center called In Eynem. To my knowledge, and I might be wrong, JBI Library does not provide any braille books in Yiddish. Again, a big problem!

Moving to another issue, someone recommended a Sefardi songbook for me. The book is filled with amazing songs and many Piyutim. Many of the songs are in various languages, not just Hebrew. Other languages include Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Farsi. I am sure that JBI Library has not transcribed this book in braille.

Recently, I was going to attend a Jewish renewal service. Somebody asked me if I could get a Jewish renewal Siddur in braille. No, there is no such thing at the moment.

Are there other organizations that provide such material in other countries?
If a blind Jew in France wants to obtain a braille Siddur, is there an organization in France that provides them? I don't think so. I just heard that the Russian Jewish Federation has produced a Braille Siddur. That's really fantastic! But what about other countries?

I'm wondering how a blind rabbi accesses all this material. One of the things I'm looking at is the application called Sefaria, but we blind Jews still deserve many more books. At this point, I don't have a solution, maybe a lot of us putting our heads together can come up with some ideas.

Daveed

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