The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections
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Through our programs, YIVO makes discoveries and treasures from our collections accessible and fosters the creation of contemporary Jewish culture. Explore our upcoming events below.

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Class starts Sep 8 10:00am-11:30am

[FALL2024] Beginner II Yiddish (Sunday)

This weekly class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 15 10:00am-11:30am

[FALL2024] Intermediate I Yiddish

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner IV Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 15 10:30am-12:00pm

[FALL2024] Beginner I Yiddish (Sunday Morning)

This weekly class covers the alef-beys and grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for those who are new to the Yiddish language or would like a review.

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Class starts Sep 15 12:00pm-1:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner I Yiddish (Sunday Afternoon)

This weekly class covers the alef-beys and grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for those who are new to the Yiddish language or would like a review.

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Class starts Sep 8 12:00pm-1:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner III Yiddish (Sunday)

This weekly class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 8 12:00pm-1:30pm

[FALL2024] Advanced Topics in Yiddish Literature & Grammar: What is Modern about the Yiddish Classics?

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Advanced I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 8 2:00pm-3:30pm

[FALL2024] Advanced I Yiddish (Sunday Afternoon)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate IV Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 8 4:00pm-5:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate II Yiddish (Sunday)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 15 6:00pm-7:30pm

[FALL2024] Advanced I Yiddish (Sunday Evening)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate IV Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 23 11:00am-12:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner I Yiddish (Monday)

This weekly class covers the alef-beys and grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for those who are new to the Yiddish language or would like a review.

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Class starts Sep 9 11:00am-12:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate III Yiddish (Monday Morning)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 9 11:00am-12:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate IV Yiddish

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate III Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 9 3:00pm-4:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate III Yiddish (Monday Afternoon)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

read more
Class starts Sep 9 4:00pm-5:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate II Yiddish (Monday)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

read more
Class starts Sep 9 6:30pm-8:00pm

[FALL2024] Advanced II Yiddish

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Advanced I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 17 11:00am-12:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner IV Yiddish

This weekly class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner III Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 10 1:00pm-2:50pm

[FALL2024] Beginner Reading Yiddish

This weekly reading class covers grammar and how to read Yiddish texts with the help of a dictionary. It is for students new to Yiddish, especially those interested in obtaining reading proficiency for academic or archival research.

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Class starts Sep 10 3:00-4:30pm

[FALL2024] Intermediate II Yiddish (Tuesday)

This weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intermediate I Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 10 6:00pm-7:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner III Yiddish (Tuesday)

This weekly class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 17 6:00pm-7:30pm

[FALL2024] Beginner I Yiddish (In-person)

This weekly class covers the alef-beys and grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for those who are new to the Yiddish language or would like a review.

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Class starts Sep 5 6:00pm-7:30pm

[FALL2024] Advanced Topics in Yiddish Literature & Grammar: Autobiographical Writing in Yiddish

This twice-weekly class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Intensive Advanced II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Class starts Sep 11 9:30am-11:00am

[FALL2024] Readings in Yiddish Prose

Read, listen to, and talk about short stories, essays, journalistic writing, folklore, and more from a literary and linguistic point of view.

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Wednesday
Nov 6
7:30pm

In Search of Greener Fields: Rurality, Nostalgia, and Ideology in Yiddish-American Folksong

Zeke Levine considers themes of rurality in 20th century Yiddish-American folksong amongst Eastern European antecedents and the emerging American folk revival.

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Thursday
Nov 7
7:00pm

The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen

Rebecca Margolis, in conversation with Olga Gershenson, investigates how translated and subtitled Yiddish dialogue in film and television reimagines Jewish lore and tells new stories, where the supernatural looms over the narrative.

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Class starts Sep 15 12:30pm-2:00pm

[FALL2024] Mothers, Revolutionaries, and Workers: Women during the Great Transformation of Eastern European Jewish Society

Explore women’s experiences at the turn of the twentieth century, a transformative period in modern Eastern European Jewish history that included industrialization, mass migrations, and the rise of nationalisms.

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Monday
Nov 11
1:00pm

Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

Marek Tuszewicki examines folk healing practices performed by Eastern European Jews and their intersection with modern medical knowledge, in a discussion led by cultural critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen.

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Class starts Sep 17 6:30pm-8:00pm

[FALL2024] Getting From Oy To Vey: Yiddish as an Expression of Traditional Jewish Life and Learning

Michael Wex leads an in-depth analysis of Yiddish, revealing how Jewish texts and non-Jewish concepts have been incorporated into the language.

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Class starts Sep 17 6:30pm-8:00pm

[FALL2024] Beginner IV Yiddish (In-person)

This weekly class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for students who have completed Beginner III Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

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Monday
Nov 18
1:00pm

Jewish Songs and Dances for Piano: Joel Engel's "A krants yidishe folks-nigunim" (1924)

Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and Sahun Sam Hong perform Joel Engel’s A krants yidishe folksnigunim (1924): a collection of Jewish folksongs, dances, Hasidic nigunim, and religious melodies in arrangements for piano and four hand piano.

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Wednesday
Nov 20
1:00pm

Representations of the Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose, 1948–1967

Gali Drucker Bar-Am, in a conversation led by Barbara Mann, describes how Yiddish-Israeli writers played a vital role in shaping Israel’s cultural identity in its early years.

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Wednesday
Nov 20
7:30pm

'Tefilatah' (Her Prayer): The Female Experience Through the Eyes of Male Composers

Join the American Society for Jewish Music and YIVO for a concert offering a beautiful and culturally rich experience of how various male composers from different eras captured the female experience.

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Monday
Dec 2
1:00pm

Yiddish Language During the Holocaust

Through the lenses of cultural history, philology, and literary interpretation, Hannah Pollin-Galay investigates how the Holocaust radically altered the way many Eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish, in a discussion led by Samuel Kassow.

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Wednesday
Dec 4
7:00pm

Joseph Brodsky: Epitaph for a Centaur, Six Years Later

Join YIVO for a screening of a short film exploring the poet Joseph Brodsky’s Jewish identity, his legacy, and the political undertones of his writing.

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Thursday
Dec 5
7:00pm

Proof of Identity

This US premiere of the POLIN Museum’s new documentary by Mikołaj Grynberg offers viewers a glimpse into what it means to be a Polish Jew today. Through interviews with the generation that has had no direct contact with the Holocaust survivors in their families, Grynberg’s film reflects on how Holocaust memory has evolved in Poland.

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Tuesday
Dec 10
7:00pm

Burning Off the Page

Join YIVO for the New York premiere of a documentary about Yiddish poet and fiction writer Celia Dropkin, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Eli Gorn, professor Agnieszka Legutko, and poet Edward Hirsch.

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Thursday
Dec 19
7:00pm

A Very Jewish Christmas: Jewish Sitcom Characters Navigate December

Jennifer Caplan explores several examples of Jewish television characters attempting to survive the holiday season. A kosher Chinese food dinner will follow the presentation.

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Sunday
Dec 29
3:00pm

Hanukkah Concert 2024 - The Andy Statman Trio

This annual Hanukkah concert showcases songs and stories that charm and delight audiences in celebration of this joyous holiday. This year's concert will feature a performance by The Andy Statman Trio.

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Class starts Jan 5 6:00pm-7:30pm

[WY2025] The Lullaby of Second Avenue: Yiddish Urban Theater

Mikhl Yashinsky examines a series of powerful theatrical scenes to explore the motivating forces and inspiration behind their creation.

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Class starts Jan 6 1:00pm-2:30pm

[WY2025] Alefbeys Workshop

Josh Price prepares students to start learning Yiddish with an introduction to the Yiddish alphabet, basic reading, writing, and pronunciation.

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Class starts Jan 6 4:00pm-5:30pm

[WY2025] Introduction to Ashkenazi Jewish Foodways

Eve Jochnowitz examines how Ashkenazic foodways, along with the Yiddish language and the rhythms of Jewish practice, formed the medium in which Jewish life was and is lived in the Yiddish world.

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Class starts Jan 7 9:00am-10:15am

[WP2025] Outside the Synagogue: Traditional Songs and Nigunim of Eastern Yiddish Speakers

Michael Lukin explores the various genres of Yiddish folk songs and old Hasidic wordless nigunim, including ballads, folk paraphrases, cumulative songs, lullabies, lyric songs, and “cleaving nigunim,” as well as dance, march, and joy-nigunim.

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Class starts Jan 7 10:45am-12:00pm

[WP2025] In the Aftermath of the National Origins Act, 1924-1928

Hasia Diner examines landmark moments in the half decade between the passage of the National Origins Act and the 1929 onset of the Great Depression that shaped Jewish life in America.

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Class starts Jan 7 12:00pm-1:15pm

[WP2025] Desire in Yiddish Literature

Anita Norich explores a range of familiar and unfamiliar Yiddish stories and poems to consider how Yiddish writers responded to the social and political issues of their day: emigration/immigration, various forms of nationalism, socialism, religious belief, and rejection of religious observance.

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Class starts Jan 7 1:00pm-2:15pm

[WP2025] Whitewash: Holocaust Distortion in Poland and Beyond

Jan Grabowski sheds light on the origins of Holocaust distortion as well as its impact on Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in Poland, in Europe, and beyond.

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Class starts Jan 7 2:30pm-3:45pm

[WP2025] Making and Unmaking Jews in our Post-Pandemic Age of Antisemitism

Sander Gilman discusses the ever-shifting meaning of being a Jew in our contemporary debates about antisemitism, looking at the continuities and discontinuities both among those who define themselves as Jewish and those who seek to define Jews, both from within and without.

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Class starts Jan 7 4:00pm-5:15pm

[WP2025] Jewish Languages

Ilan Stavans tackles questions such as what constitutes a Jewish language, why have some developed more than others, when and where Jewish languages emerge from, and how Jewish languages die, if and when they do.

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Class starts Jan 7 6:30pm-7:45pm

[WP2025] Jewish Intellectuals and the Birth of the Nuclear Era

Alex Wellerstein tracks the key figures, ethical debates, and geopolitical influences of Jewish scientists on the creation, proliferation, and plans for the use of nuclear weapons, beginning with the rise of Jewish prominence in theoretical physics in the early 1900s.

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Class starts Jan 8 10:00am-11:30am

[WY2025] Yiddish Folktales

Vera Szabó studies Yiddish folktales for a glimpse into the spoken language, as well as thoughts, desires, fears, and fantasies of those who told and listened to them.

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Class starts Jan 8 10:45am-12:00pm

[WP2025] Encounters with Mephistopheles

Jonathan Brent explores the ultimate source of evil as it has been visualized and understood in the twentieth century by Thomas Mann and Arnošt Lustig whose works evolved out of their immediate experiences with Nazi totalitarianism.

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Class starts Jan 8 12:00pm-1:30pm

[WP2025] Entertaining America: Jews and Hollywood

J. Hoberman examines the relationship between Jews and Hollywood, as producers, artists, and symbolic figures.

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Class starts Jan 8 6:00pm-7:30pm

[WY2025] Yiddish Argentina: Countryside, City, Stage, and Tango – A YIVO Centennial Retrospective

Abraham Lichtenbaum delves into the history of the Jewish population, Yiddish language and culture, and YIVO in Argentina.

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Class starts Jan 14 11:00am-12:30pm

[WY2025] Contrasting Styles, Common Themes: A Taste of Modern Yiddish Prose

Eugene Orenstein explores the development of a modern Yiddish prose style as seen in stories by Sholem Asch, Dovid Bergelson, Yosef Opatoshu, and Moyshe Nadir.

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Class starts Jan 21 6:00pm-7:30pm

[WY2025] Seasons in Yiddish Song

Perl Teitelbaum explores folksongs passed down from generation to generation and songs by beloved poets and composers.

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Wednesday
Jan 22
1:00pm

Autocracies in the 21st Century

For the 2025 Winter Program Keynote, Anne Applebaum and Jonathan Brent discuss how autocracies have evolved in the 21st century.

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Monday
Mar 10
1:00pm

Yiddish Tangos and Klezmer Mambos

Join YIVO for a panel discussion with Ronald Robboy, Sonia Gollance, and Josh Kun, as they explore the remarkable influence of Latin American music and dance on the culture of Yiddish speaking communities in the United States.

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Thursday
May 1
7:00pm

Falafel, Freilach and Frijoles: From Mambo to Borscht

Enjoy a concert performed by Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra featuring Jewish and Yiddish classics in Afro Latin big band versions and Latin classics in Klezmer arrangements.

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Wednesday
Jun 11
1:00pm

New Trends in YIVO Scholarship

Join YIVO for a panel discussion sharing new research on various historic YIVO initiatives featuring presentations by William Pimlott, Kamil Kijek, and Nicolas Vallois, followed by a conversation led by Jessica Kirzane.

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Jun 22 7:00pm-9:30pm and Jun 23 10:00am-9:30pm

YIVO in America

Join us for a celebration of YIVO’s 100th anniversary with a conference focusing on how YIVO’s founding vision for Jewish social sciences has been realized in America since its headquarters shifted to New York City in 1940.

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