From the Pages of Yedies

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The first News from YIVO appeared as a short article in the Yiddish literary journal, Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages) on October 9, 1925, shortly after YIVO was formally founded in Vilna (then Wilno, Poland; now Vilnius, Lithuania).

The article reports on the meeting of the Bibliographical Commission, a group established to come up with policies and procedures for YIVO’s planned Bibliographical Center. The group agreed that the center would catalog not only books, but also articles in journals and newspapers, and expressed concern about whether European library standards and procedures could be adapted to meet the special needs of cataloging works in Yiddish. Readers who wanted to assist in the work of the Bibliographical Center were invited to contact YIVO founder Max Weinreich at his home address in Vilna, YIVO’s first headquarters.

YIVO also announced plans to launch a bi-monthly journal called Yidisher kultur korespondents (Yiddish Culture Correspondence) that would report on the activities of Yiddish schools and educational organizations, Yiddish cultural associations, Jewish studies programs in universities, and individual research projects, as well as the work of YIVO. Since the intended audience for Yidisher kultur korespondents was the general public, it was to be free of scholarly jargon, so that “an intelligent reader will be able to understand and find it interesting.” Prospective contributors were invited to contact the scholar Dr. Nokhem Shtif, another founder of YIVO, in Berlin.

It seems that Yidisher kultur korespondents never did get off the ground, but YIVO went on to publish a number of other journals. These were scholarly publications but the institute continued to tailor other projects to reach out to the general public,  including exhibitions and special programs for teachers and students in Yiddish schools.

This first edition of the Yedies concludes with the announcement that YIVO was planning to kick off an international fundraising campaign over the upcoming Jewish holiday of Sukes (Sukkoth).