News & Features

In this episode, originally broadcast on March 21, 1965, Dr. Shlomo Noble visits the WEVD studio for a program entitled “Mentshn fregn dem YIVO” (People Ask YIVO). Dr. Noble reports on the types of questions that YIVO gets and how YIVO receives the inquiries and answers them, as well as ...

Coverage of the Vilna Project

YIVO’s press conference in Vilnius about the launch of its fundraising campaign for the YIVO Vilna Project was covered by numerous Lithuanian news outlets and other worldwide media, including:

Der Standard
Delfi (English-language)
LRT Fonoteka Radio
Lrytas
ELTA
Kauno diena
Alfa
Vilniaus Diena

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania featured a report on the press conference on their English-language website.

The project was written up in the New York Times, The Jewish Week, and the Forward. The New York Times article was picked up by numerous websites, including Haaretz.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent and Director of Development Suzanne Leon held a press conference to announce YIVO’s new international project to preserve and digitize all of the YIVO prewar collections that survived looting by the Nazis and which are now located in both YIVO in New York and in Lithuanian repositories.

An exhibition honoring doctor and Jewish communal leader Tsemakh Shabad (Szabad; 1864-1935) opened at the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) on September 21, 2014. Based on photographs and artifacts from YIVO’s Archives and Library and curated by Edward Portnoy, it explores the life and legacy of a man celebrated not only for ...

On Sunday, October 12, at 6:30pm YIVO presents “Making/History: Reconstructing the Gwoździec Synagogue,” about a ten-year project to rebuild the roof and ceiling of a 17th-century wooden synagogue for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. “Making/History” features the project’s creators, Rick and Laura Brown of Handshouse Studio; Trillium Studios filmmakers with excerpts from their documentary, Raise the Roof; and project funder Irene Pletka.

Helena Gindi, Public Program Director at YIVO, and Rick Brown of Handshouse Studio sat down and spoke about the project, Handshouse’s educational philosophy (“learn by doing”), and why the Browns are in still in awe of Gwoździec. Highlights from their conversation appear below.

Attend the event.
Watch the trailer for Raise the Roof.

Jennifer Young, YIVO’s Director of Education, interviewed Gennady Estraikh, YIVO’s inaugural Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature, about Prof. Estraikh’s upcoming Ruth Gay Seminar at YIVO, Farewell to Communism: Howard Fast and Soviet Yiddish Writers, on Tuesday, October 7, at 7:00pm. YIVO Members have the opportunity to get to know Prof. Estraikh, other members, and the YIVO staff at a Members-Only reception at 5:30pm - RSVP today!

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 ...

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announces The YIVO Vilna Collections project, a seven-year international project to preserve, digitize and virtually reunite YIVO’s prewar archives located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal. The project will also digitally reconstruct the historic Strashun Library of Vilna, one of the great prewar libraries in Europe. Project partners are The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, The Central State Archives of Lithuania and the National Library of Lithuania.

YIVO’s Director of Education, Jennifer Young, sat down with Gennady Estraikh, YIVO’s inaugural Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature, to ask him about the evening class he will be teaching at YIVO, “Modernism and the Yiddish Imagination.” The class will meet for six sessions on Tuesday evenings, 6:30-8:30, beginning October 28th. Click here for more information, and to register.

There has been little attention paid to the history of letterhead, the pre-printed stationery used almost everywhere by companies, institutions, organizations, and individuals for correspondence. According to "The History of Letterhead,"the first use of the term in English was in 1890, as a new commercial term for printed letter paper. ...