News & Features

On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 at 7:00pm, Richard Pipes, Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University will deliver a lecture at YIVO about the cataclysmic impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution on East European Jewish life. Attend the event. YIVO was founded in 1925, less than a decade ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The new Hollywood movie The Monuments Men has been drawing renewed attention to the postwar rescue by the Allies of art and other cultural treasures looted by the Nazis.

YIVO’s history is inextricably tied to the work of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program, established by the Allied armies in 1943 to protect important heritage sites on the battlefront. As the war drew to a close, its mission expanded to include the rescue of artworks and other cultural artifacts that had been stolen from the Nazis.

Eddy Portnoy tells the story of how the MFAA saved the remnants of YIVO’s prewar collections in this week’s Forward. Read “How Real 'Monuments Men' Saved Priceless YIVO Yiddish Treasure.”

By JENNIFER YOUNG and LEAH FALK

The YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization recently celebrated its third anniversary, as YIVO welcomed its largest ever Winter Program cohort, seventy students, who took part in eight morning, afternoon, and evening classes over three weeks this past January.

As always, the Winter Program attracted students of all ages, professional backgrounds, and perspectives: rabbinical students, teachers, social workers, lawyers, and architects shared classrooms with novelists, young historians, psychoanalysts, and genealogists.  Our faculty mirrored our student diversity, representing NYU, Columbia, Wesleyan, Trinity, Rutgers, the New School, and even YIVO itself.

On November 15, 1964, the featured guest on YIVO’s radio program was YIVO Chief Archivist Ezekiel Lifschutz, who discussed one particular archival collection under his care: the Papers of Kalman Marmor (RG 205). Marmor (1879-1956) was a Yiddish writer, literary critic, editor, lecturer, and political activist. In 1906, he joined ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN Uriel Weinreich’s Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary, first published in 1968, has become an indispensible resource for generations of Yiddish scholars, as well as anyone else who has ever set out to learn Yiddish. Few realize that the publication of the dictionary might not have been possible without the help ...

YIVO presents a panel discussion with European Union Parliament Member, Dr. Leonidas Donskis; award-winning writer and political dissident, Tomas Venclova; Faina Kukliansky, Chair and advocate for the Lithuanian Jewish Community; Saulius Sužiedėlis, of Millersville University; and Mikhail Iossel of Concordia University.

On Thursday, February 6 at 6:30pm, YIVO, in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute and the Center for Jewish History, will present a roundtable discussion: Jews, Cities and Culture: Hamburg, New York and Kiev, with Emily J. Levine, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Natan Meir, ...

Every month, the YIVO Library receives complimentary copies of books whose content has been drawn in part from research done by the authors in the YIVO Archives and Library. Below is a partial list of books recently received.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN These days, as events in Egypt feature prominently in the news, little thought is given to the rich Jewish life and culture that once flourished there before 1967 when a wave of persecution drove almost the entire Jewish population from the country. Only a handful of Jews live ...

פֿון איציק גאָטעסמאַן

Prof. Michael Steinlauf of Gratz College will speak on I. L. Peretz and the revolution of 1905 at YIVO in Yiddish on Thursday, 7:00 PM, February 6th. The 1905 revolution motivated the great Yiddish writer to participate in new cultural, artistic and political arenas until his death in 1915. Itzik Gottesman spoke with Dr. Steinlauf on the subject of his talk.

דאָנערשטיק, דעם 6טן פֿעברואַר 7:00 אין אָוונט, וועט ד"ר משה־שײַע שטײַנלויף, אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר פֿון געשיכטע בײַם „גרעץ־אוניווערסיטעט" אין פּענסילווייניע, רעפֿערירן בײַם ייִוואָ וועגן  „פּרץ אין אַ צײַט פֿון רעוואָלוציע". ד"ר שטײַנלויף פֿירט אָן מיט דער „חורבן־ און גענאָציד־שטודיעס־פּראָגראַם" און איז באַקאַנט פֿאַר זײַנע פֿאָרשונגען פֿון די פּוילישע ייִדן אינעם 20סטן יאָרהונדערט, און בפֿרט פֿונעם ייִדישן לעבן אין וואַרשע, סײַ מכּוח דעם פּאָליטישן, סײַ דעם קולטורעלן לעבן.

ד"ר שטײַנלויף אַליין האַט וואַרשעווער ייִחוס. זײַן משפּחה שטאַמט פֿון דור־דורות גערער חסידים אין דער שטאָט, וועלכע האָבן געהאַט אַ גרויס אײַזנוואַרג־געשעפֿט און געווען פֿון די אַנטוויקלערס פֿון ייִדישן מסחר אין וואַרשע. זייערע קבֿרים שטייען נאָך אויפֿן וואַרשעווער בית־עולם.