News & Features

It is with sadness that the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research mourns the passing of Theodore Bikel (1924-2015). Mr. Bikel was a true renassaince man of the 20th century with prolific achievements in theatre, film and music, as well as a humanitarian who fought for civil and workers' rights. He ...

The week of June 15, 2015 set the heads of Yiddish and Jewish culture aficionados in New York City spinning: Kulturfest, a week-long celebration of Jewish performing arts, offered an almost overwhelming array of concerts, theatrical performances, and lectures across the city, with sometimes more than one event taking place simultaneously.

YIVO’s contribution to Kulturfest was the world premiere of the Modicut Project, a reinterpretation of the first Yiddish language puppet theater in the U.S., which flourished in the 1920s-1930s in New York City. An artist-scholar collaboration between Great Small Works and Rutgers Professor Edward Portnoy, the new, original play brings together the sensibilities of 1920s avant garde puppet theater, socialism, political activism, Yiddish, ethnographic fieldwork, and identity politics with the stagecraft of Great Small Works.

Janet Hadda, Yiddish professor, psychoanalyst, and biographer of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Allen Ginsberg, died in California on June 23, 2015 at the age of 69. Professor Hadda, who studied and worked at YIVO in the 1960s-70s, was one of the first tenured professors of Yiddish in the United States. Her work is best known for bringing the techniques and insights of psychoanalysis to the study of Yiddish literature.

Read her obituary and a more personal tribute by David Roskies in the Forward.

Assemble the letterheads of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals in Europe, North and South America, and Palestine from the 1890s to the eve of World War II in 1939 and you have a portrait of the Jewish world: transnational; diverse in language, political, and religious orientation; and flourishing.

Di gantse velt af a firmeblank (The Whole World on a Letterhead) is an experiment in building that portrait. Here, we hope to bring you several times a month, a different example of letterhead from a single collection in the YIVO Archives, the Papers of Kalman Marmor.

In this episode from January 8, 1967, Dr. Arieh Tartakower, sociologist and chairman of the Israeli Division of the World Jewish Congress and president of the World Hebrew Confederation delivers a speech on the differences between Hebrew and Yiddish culture, during a visit to YIVO on December 27, 1966: "We are ...

Author Jan Schwarz talks about his book.

by VIOLET LUTZ

Of the many interesting materials that I've encountered in the YIVO archival collections that I have had the honor and pleasure of processing as an archivist at the Center for Jewish History, I am struck sometimes by particular items that offer insights into everyday life in a particular time and place. The Adelebsen Jewish community records held by YIVO, dating from 1830 to 1917, contain remarkable traces of the evolving Jewish communal life in the small German town of Adelebsen, in the district of Göttingen, in what is today the state of Lower Saxony. The region was historically part of the kingdom of Hanover. (The latter was annexed by the kingdom of Prussia in 1866; and subsequently became part of the German Empire, founded under Prussia's leadership in 1871.)

Assemble the letterheads of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals in Europe, North and South America, and Palestine from the 1890s to the eve of World War II in 1939 and you have a portrait of the Jewish world: transnational; diverse in language, political, and religious orientation; and flourishing.

Di gantse velt af a firmeblank (The Whole World on a Letterhead) is an experiment in building that portrait. Here, we hope to bring you several times a month, a different example of letterhead from a single collection in the YIVO Archives, the Papers of Kalman Marmor.

This episode, originally broadcast on May 22, 1966, features Dr. Shimshon Tapuach of the Department of Agriculture, Jewish Agency, Tel Aviv. By then an Israeli, Dr. Tapuach (whose last name, fittingly enough, means “apple” in Hebrew), spent part of his early academic career at YIVO in Vilna in the 1930s, ...

Two legends come together at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s 13th Annual Heritage Gala: Theodore Bikel and Sholem Aleichem. Theodore Bikel – world-renowned actor, singer, author, and activist – was honored with YIVO’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his commitment to popularizing Yiddish culture. YIVO also announced the creation of the Sholem Aleichem Family Legacy Collection donated in memory of Bel Kaufman, Sholem Aleichem’s granddaughter, by her children, Thea and Jon Goldstine. The collection includes rare family treasures.