Suddenly, Yiddish is everywhere. The language of mostly European Jews has migrated to all corners of the globe, yet has been largely contained within urban communities of elderly Jews. Until now.

It seems appropriate that The Forward, that venerable vestige of early Jewish immigration, would join the 21st century with a Yiddish column, hosted by Rukhl Schaechter (Forward.com/Yiddish) in its new online version. Talk about mixing the old and the new. And now Duolingo, a popular language-learning platform, has launched a Yiddish course, and reportedly about 10,000 have already signed up to learn not only the words and expressions, but even the grammar. Who knew Yiddish had grammar? And then there’s the Yiddish Book Center, which has just released a new multimedia Yiddish textbook. Yes, indeed, Yiddish has upped its cred.

But get this — Oy, ikh ken nisht gloybn es — none other than Yale University, that bastion of Ivy League learning, is planning to launch beginner Yiddish classes this fall, allowing students to fulfill their language requirements with Yiddish, including readings of love songs, poetry, folktales and, ver veyst?, maybe even tweets. To put an academic spin on the news, Maurice Samuels, chair of Yale’s Judaic Studies program, explained that “Yale is a center for the study of Jewish history and the Holocaust, and Yiddish is central to those disciplines.”