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After singing a Yiddish lullaby familiar to generations of Jewish children, Sheila Witt looked out onto the Main and reminded her students that there is no better place in Montreal to learn the language.

“Out there in those streets, this is where it all happened — this is where Yiddish was spoken, this is where the signs were in Yiddish,” Witt said during her class at the Museum of Jewish Montreal on St-Laurent Blvd. and Duluth Ave., once the heart of the city’s Jewish quarter.

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“I used to run up that street to see my bubby, and down that street was a school.”

After teaching Yiddish to Jewish students in Montreal for 39 years, Witt finally retired last year from Jewish People’s and Peretz Schools.

But her love of the language runs so deep, the 77-year-old teacher can’t stay out of the classroom.

She returns to the Côte-St-Luc school twice a week to work as a teaching assistant and also teaches classes at the Jewish Public Library as part of her campaign to keep Yiddish alive in Montreal.