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Dov-Ber Kerler

Dov-Ber Kerler is a Yiddish poet and philologist who is a professor at Indiana University.

born 1958Yiddish poetryResearch on modern literary YiddishThe Yiddish Ethnographic ProjectEditing the Yerushalmer Almanakh

Born: 6 March 1958, Moscow
Occupation: poet, philologist
Education: University of Oxford

Dov-Ber Kerler was born in 1958 in Moscow

Dov-Ber Kerler was born in Moscow in 1958. He is the son of the Yiddish poet Yosef Kerler and grew up surrounded by Yiddish culture. In 1971 he moved with his family to Jerusalem.

He earned a bachelor's degree in Yiddish literature and Indo-European linguistics at the Hebrew University in 1983. He then began doctoral studies in Yiddish at the University of Oxford, where he was the first doctoral student in the field. His 1988 doctorate dealt with the origins of modern Yiddish literature in Eastern Europe.

From 1989 to 2000 he taught at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 1999 he published the book Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish, based on his research. In 2001 he moved to the United States to head the Yiddish studies program at Indiana University.

Since 2002 he has led the Yiddish Ethnographic Project, which records Yiddish speakers in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. He has been an editor of the Yerushalmer Almanakh since 1993 and its acting editor since 2003. He writes Yiddish poetry, partly under the pen name Boris Karlov, and won the Rubinlicht Prize in 2006.