From the Pages of Yedies

As YIVO mourns the passing of our longtime music archivist Chana Mlotek, we look back at what may be the first mention of her in Yedies: News from YIVO, in June 1948, four years after she arrived at YIVO to be secretary to YIVO’s research director Max Weinreich.

This article from 65 years ago reports on an important event in Chana’s life, the YIVO scholarship she received to attend an intensive course in Yiddish language, literature, and folklore at UCLA, taught Weinreich. Chana, here identified by her maiden name, Eleanor Gordon, was beginning her career as a scholar of Jewish folk music. Among her fellow scholarship recipients was Joseph (Yosl) Mlotek, soon to become her husband and her partner in Yiddish cultural activism and research.

Other scholarship recipients included Shikl (Joshua) Fishman, who would become an eminent linguist; and Uriel Weinreich, Max Weinreich’s son and later Yiddish lexicographer (author of the Yiddish-English, English-Yiddish dictionary that bears his name, for which Chana served as proofreader). Uriel’s future wife, the folklorist Beatrice (Bina) Silverman, and his younger brother, Gabriel, were also enrolled in the course.