Past Events

Looking at the Jews through the lens of French literature, politics, and religion, three scholars consider the far-reaching impact of Jewish emancipation on the meaning of being Jewish in the modern world.

In this lecture, Aleksandra Shatskikh speaks about the significance of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square painting, and sheds new light on Malevich, his legacy and influence, and the genesis of the Suprematist movement.

Isaac Shapiro joined Rabbi Marvin Tokayer in conversation to share his family’s experience, his fascinating story growing up Jewish in Japan, and his ultimate immigration to America.

Now erased from historical memory, the Velizh Affair (1823-1835) was the longest ritual murder case in the modern world, and most likely in all of world history.

Eliyahu Stern joined in conversation with Jeremy Dauber for a discussion about the Vilna Gaon, his influence on modern Judaism, and why his legacy has been claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists and the Orthodox.

Fall 2013 marked the 100th anniversary of the trial of Mendel Beilis, an innocent factory clerk in tsarist Russia accused of murdering a Christian. During its time, the Beilis Trial provoked international protest from media, politicians, writers and intellectuals, but today it is little known.

Between 1934 and 1945, approximately one thousand children were rescued from Nazi persecution and brought to America unaccompanied by their parents.

For centuries, Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world. Until World War II, this area was home to over forty percent of world Jewry: nearly three and a half million Jews lived in Poland, and nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union.

Jay Berkovitz and Magda Teter take a rare look at three individual court cases recorded in the Pinkas of Metz. Selected because of their illuminating character, these cases offer a glimpse into the cultural, legal and sexual lives of members of the Metz Jewish community.

Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature.

Today, there are approximately half a million Yiddish speakers in the United States. But what role does it play in speakers’ lives?

Rabbi Moshe Arye Bamberger, the Head of the Bet Din of the Jewish community of Metz, France presented a seminar on a new publication, Torat Chachmei Metz, or The Torah of the Scholars of Metz, which is based on an original manuscript in the YIVO Archives.

Karen Auerbach’s book, The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw After the Holocaust, traces the history of ten families that were neighbors in one building as a case study of Jewish life in the postwar Polish capital.

In YIVO’s annual commemoration of the Vilna Jewish community, Yelena Shmulenson, Binyumen Schaechter, Ruth Baran-Gerold, and others explore Vilna’s presence in poetry, music, and personal history.

This Yiddish memorial program honoring educator Mordkhe Schaechter had remarks by Samuel Kassow and Gella Schweid-Fishman, and a music program with Anthony Mordechai-Tsvi Russell and Alexander Ruvinstein.

This program marked a celebration of the new Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary, the largest and most complete of its kind to date, published by Indiana University Press.

Elissa Bemporad speaks on her new book about the Bolshevik experiment in Minsk.

In 1904, Russian Jewish writer-ethnographer Vladimir Bogoraz went to Gomel', a city in present-day Belarus, to document the trial regarding the 1903 Gomel' pogrom.

Yiddish in the City: Songs of love, longing and lust for life. From your first kiss to your first glass of wine, from the foggy hills of San Francisco to a Hungarian café, to the raucous streets of New York City.

The Spring 2013 Sidney Krum concert presents masterpieces by Jewish composers who were influenced by German musical culture.

In 1930, a group of Eastern European Jewish scholars, writers, and activists living in Berlin, Germany began planning the first ever comprehensive Yiddish-language encyclopedia to celebrate the seventieth birthday of the historian Simon Dubnow.

This talk explored how Isaak Babel, the great Soviet Jewish short-story writer, not only knew Yiddish, but was thoroughly immersed in Yiddish langauge and culture.

“Floating Worlds and Future Cities" presents the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of the work of the great Russian-Jewish artist, architect, designer and theoretician, Lazar Khidekel.

Oskar has just killed himself. After waiting a quarter century, he returned to Prague only to find it was no longer his home. With his memorial service, Yale historian and prize-winning author Marci Shore leads us gently into the post-totalitarian world.

This lecture presents a portrait of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants who settled in Boyle Heights in the early 20th century, a neighborhood referred to by generations of historians as “Los Angeles’ Lower East Side.”

This “From the YIVO Archives” program featured YIVO's Hersch Wasser collection (1939-1946), which consists of materials from the Warsaw ghetto organized by Emanuel Ringelblum as part of the underground Oyneg Shabes collection effort.

Boris Sandler presents his documentary about the Yiddish poet Josef Kerler (1918-2000), whose lyrical, populist poetry was first lauded and then suppressed in his native Soviet Union.

Uriel Weinreich, the most prolific and wide-ranging Yiddish researcher, is ignored by new scholars, largely because they neglect the Yiddish research tradition.

In this talk David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society.

This program was a day-long conference to mark the publication of the inaugural volume of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization and its companion book, Jews and Words by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger.

Drawing on his book, Taking Penguins to the Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia, Professor Emil Draitser of Hunter College explores the role of jokelore in helping Soviet Jews survive oppression, fight discrimination, and reaffirm their Jewish identity.

The end of the 19th century saw the birth of secular Jewish nationalism, the discovery of psychoanalysis and the founding of the philosophical movement known as phenomenology.