The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections
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Past Events

2015

Monday
Dec 28
12:30pm

Highlights and Treasures from the YIVO Archives

As part of the first Yiddish New York festival, YIVO archivists present gems from YIVO’s rare book, sound, and manuscript collections.

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Saturday
Dec 26
8:00pm

Dreaming in Yiddish: Adrienne Cooper Memorial Concert

The annual concert honoring Yiddish singer and scholar Adrienne Cooper presents the award for “Dreaming in Yiddish” to Joshua Dolgin, aka Socalled.

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Monday
Dec 21
3:00pm

The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945

Joshua Zimmerman sheds new light on the Polish Underground’s treatment of Jews during World War II.

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Sunday
Dec 13
6:00pm

Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein: Jewish Roots in American Music

The Sidney Krum Young Artists and scholar Orin Grossman explore the Jewish influences on the work of three seminal 20th century American composers.

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Sunday
Dec 6
8:00pm

Soviet Songs with a Jewish Flavor: Evgeny Kissin, Boris Sandler, Margarita and Nukhim Koyfman

Pianist Evgeny Kissin, Boris Sandler, and others present an evening of popular Soviet music from their album Songs with a Jewish Flavor.

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Thursday
Dec 3
3:00pm

Chronicling a Dead City: The Fate of the Dubovo Shtetl in 1919

Elissa Bemporad uses the story of the Dubovo shtetl during the Russian Civil War as a case study for the “death of the shtetl” and its impact on Soviet Jews.

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Wednesday
Dec 2
7:00pm

Judith Berkson Presents: Cantorial Music from the YIVO Archives

Judith Berkson, Frank London, and ensemble present Berkson’s original cantorial composition inspired by YIVO holdings, and reinterpretations of music from the golden age of cantorial music.

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Tuesday
Dec 1
3:00pm

A Laboratory for Forced Labor: The Jews in East-European War Zones, 1914-1924

Lecture by Thomas Chopard, recipient of the YIVO Fellowship in Eastern European Jewish Studies (The Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellowship and the Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Fellowship).

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Tuesday
Nov 24
6:30pm

Exhibition Opening - Jewface: "Yiddish" Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley

Join Eddy Portnoy, Jody Rosen, and Alana Newhouse for a look at the images, language, and music of the “stage Jew,” a common character in vaudeville a century ago.

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Monday
Nov 23
3:00pm

Mobilizing the Shtetl: Betar and the Quest to Transform Small-Town Jewish Life in Interwar Poland

Scholar Daniel Heller follows the tensions between urban Betar organizers and small-town Jewish youth as activist movements swept 1930s Poland.

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Sunday
Nov 22
2:00pm

Jankiel's Legacy: Poland's Klezmer Music Heritage

Acclaimed tsimbl players Pete Rushefsky and Walter Zev Feldman join special guests for a multi-media presentation and performance exploring Poland's klezmer heritage.

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Thursday
Nov 19
7:00pm

“And now I have to read in Jewish something”: Yiddish Performances by Holocaust Survivors

In the USC Shoah Foundation’s interviews with Jewish survivors, dozens of them recite poems and sing songs in Yiddish. Jeffrey Shandler explores the meaning of these performances amid memories of the Holocaust.

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Sunday
Nov 15
6:00pm

Remembering Benjamin Harshav

Join us to celebrate the life and work of Benjamin Harshav (1928-2015), eminent translator, poet, and scholar of Hebrew and Yiddish literature.

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Tuesday
Nov 10
6:30pm

The Gymnasium Yavne: Lithuanian Jewish Girls’ Education in Telz

YIVO Fellow Isabelle Rozenbaumas presents her multi-modal journey toward understanding Lithuanian Jewry through the lens of a Jewish girls’ school.

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Thursday
Nov 5
6:30pm

90th Anniversary Gala

The YIVO 90th Anniversary Gala honored Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast.

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Monday
Nov 2
6:30pm

Peretz Markish and the Destruction of Soviet Jewish Culture

This program marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of poet and playwright Peretz Markish, discussing his Yiddish writing, biography, and the political context surrounding the 1952 “Night of the Murdered Poets.”

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Sunday
Nov 1
2:00pm

Hope and Fear: Y. L. Peretz and the Forging of Modern Jewish Culture

On the 100th anniversary of Peretz's death, Michael Steinlauf, Jeremy Dauber, Ken Frieden, and Martin Peretz discuss the great Yiddish author’s contributions to folklore, literary culture, and Jewish political consciousness.

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Tuesday
Oct 27
3:00pm

The Great Terror in the USSR and the Destruction of the Agro-Joint Program

Joint Distribution Committee archivist Misha Mitsel shares his discovery of the stories of 200 Agro-Joint employees targeted by Stalin’s Great Purge.

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Sunday
Oct 25
10:00am

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered

This symposium brings together scholars and curators to discuss photographer Roman Vishniac’s East European oeuvre as well as his newly appreciated artistic range. 

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Thursday
Oct 22
7:00pm

A Guest at the Shooters' Banquet: My Grandfather and the SS, My Jewish Family, A Search for the Truth

Author Rita Gabis reads from her new memoir and discusses her discovery of her bewildering family heritage: part Jewish, part Lithuanian resistance, part Gestapo.

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Thursday
Oct 15
6:30pm

Lawrence H. Summers on Academic Freedom and Anti-Semitism

Lawrence Summers analyzes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and its impact on academic freedom.

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Tuesday
Oct 13
6:30pm

IDA: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate

This screening of the Academy Award-winning Ida marks the anniversary of the seminal Second Vatican Council document denouncing anti-Semitism.

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Sunday
Oct 11
6:00pm

No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank’s Story

No Asylum, a film informed by YIVO’s “Otto Frank File,” reveals the story of the Frank family as they sought American asylum during World War II.

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Class starts Oct 7 6:30pm-8:30pm

Vilna in a Decade of Destruction and Renewal

This course will explore the life, death, and afterlife of Jewish Vilna during the fateful years 1939-1949.

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Sunday
Sep 20
1:00pm

Both Ground and Plow: Looking for Vilne

In YIVO’s annual commemoration of the Vilna Jewish community, Rita Gabis, Yelena Shmulenson, Ellen Perecman, and others explore Vilna’s presence in poetry, music, and personal history.

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Tuesday
Aug 11
6:30pm

Night of the Murdered Poets

On August 12, 1952, thirteen Jews were murdered by Stalin’s regime, falsely accused of treason and espionage. Half of these Jews were celebrated Yiddish writers and artists.

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Tuesday
Aug 4
6:30pm

New York Premiere of “Chava Rosenfarb: That Bubble of Being”

Chava Rosenfarb, noted Yiddish writer and major Holocaust literary figure, discusses her life in Lodz before the Holocaust, her years in the Lodz Ghetto, in Auschwitz, in Bergen-Belsen, and her career as a Yiddish writer in Montreal.

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Sunday
Jul 12
1:00pm

Annual Memorial in Honor of Mordkhe Schaechter

Former students, colleagues, family, and friends of the celebrated Yiddish language teacher, linguist and scholar gather in his honor for this annual commemoration.

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Tuesday
Jun 23
6:30pm

The Pious Ones: The World of Hasidim and Their Battles with America

In his most recent book, The Pious Ones (Harper Collins), veteran New York Times journalist Joseph Berger investigates the complex web of issues surrounding American Hasidim today.

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Sunday
Jun 21
5:00pm

Exhibition Opening: Graphic Works and Sketches of Solomon Yudovin (1920-1940)

Presented in collaboration with the Russian American Foundation and the Russian Museum of Ethnography, this exhibit features works of the renowned Russian-Jewish artist, ethnographer and scholar of Jewish traditional art, Solomon Yudovin.

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Thursday
Jun 18
7:00pm

Night Songs from a Neighboring Village: Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland

Night Songs from a Neighboring Village is a concert program pairing two musical traditions—East European Jewish and Ukrainian—that have existed side by side and nourished each other for centuries.

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Tuesday
Jun 16
7:00pm

The Modicut Project: World Premiere

If you were lucky enough to see the Great Small Works’ work-in-progress version of their reinterpretation of Modicut, the first Yiddish language puppet theater in the U.S., you’ll definitely want to return for this world premiere.

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Sunday
Jun 7
6:30pm

Dmitry Bykov in Conversation with Jonathan Brent - Isaac Babel: Life and Works

Dmitry Bykov and Jonathan Brent join for an intimate conversation about Isaac Babel's Russian Jewish identity, his life, the myth of Babel, and his contribution to literature.

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Tuesday
Jun 2
7:00pm

A Night at Lewando’s: The Book Launch of The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook

In 1938, Fania Lewando, the proprietor of a popular vegetarian restaurant in Vilna, published a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook including 400 recipes, impassioned essays about the benefits of vegetarianism, and lush full-color drawings of vegetables and fruit.

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Thursday
May 21
3:30pm

The Destruction of “Our” Vilne: Avrom Sutzkever’s Ghetto Poetry and Chaim Grade’s Poetry of Exile

Miriam Trinh presents the two writers’ reactions to the Holocaust from the twin Jewish perspectives of ghetto and exile.

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Thursday
May 14
6:30pm

On the Waves of Ether: Yiddish Language Programming on Polish Radio, 1945-1958

In this talk, Anna Rozenfeld discusses Yiddish radio programs in postwar Poland, and why they were especially meaningful to survivors and Jews abroad.

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Sunday
May 10
4:30pm

Shostakovich and Weinberg: A Musical Friendship

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), a famous Soviet composer and Mieczyslav Weinberg (1919-1996), a Jewish composer who was persecuted by the Soviet State, had an unusual and long-term personal and professional relationship.

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Sunday
May 3
11:00am

Building a Future in America: YIVO’s 90th Anniversary Celebration

A day-long celebration of YIVO’s 90th anniversary with film screenings, panels and more, exploring the history of YIVO’s pioneering work in the U.S. over the last 75 years, and its future.

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Wednesday
Apr 29
6:30pm

The Frankfurt School on Israel

In the decades following Israel’s establishment, subtle variations appeared in the attitudes of key Jewish members of the Frankfurt School—figures like Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse—toward the Jewish state.

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Wednesday
Apr 15
6:30pm

From Destruction to Rebirth: Jewish Displaced Persons After the Shoah

By 1947, 250,000 survivors lived in Displaced Persons Camps in post-war Germany. Avinoam Patt and others mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Shoah with a special look at life in the DP camps following the war.

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Tuesday
Apr 14
3:30pm

Libe and Linguistics: Towards an Archive of Yiddish Sexuality

In this talk, Zohar Weiman-Kelman draws on multiple projects that examined Yiddish sexuality in the twentieth century, and takes initial steps in generating a queer Yiddish archive of sexuality.

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Monday
Mar 30
6:30pm

Poland TODAY | The New York—Warsaw—Krakow Connection

For centuries, Poland was home to the world's largest Jewish population—totaling 3.5 million in 1939, before the Holocaust all but extinguished their world. Today the culture has made a small comeback.

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Sunday
Mar 29
2:00pm

‘Lib’Ele Duo’ Present: The Yiddish-French Connection

French singers Eléonore Biezunski and Eléonore Weill team up as the ‘Lib’Ele Duo’ (The Dragonflies) to present this rare concert blending French and Yiddish music with special musical guest Pete Rushefsky.

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Thursday
Mar 26
3:30pm

Creating Songs in Boiberik: Singing Peace at “Felker Yontev”

Each year from 1922 until 1978, when it closed, the secular Yiddish summer camp Camp Boiberik hosted the “Felker Yontev” (Holiday of Nations) Yiddish pageant, enacting Isaiah’s prophetic vision of world peace.

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Tuesday
Mar 10
6:30pm

Personal History: Searching for the Past in Home Movies

The home movies featured in Letters to Afar were taken by NY Jewish immigrants who traveled back to Poland to visit during the 1920s and 30s. How do we view these films generations later?

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Thursday
Mar 5
6:30pm

A Taste of the Old World: Jewish Food and Memory

Join a panel of leading food writers, purveyors and restaurant owners for a panel discussion about the powerful connection between Jewish food and East European Jewish memory.

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Monday
Feb 23
3:30pm

Towards a Yiddish Architecture

While Jews once comprised a sizable element of most East European cities, they were never the dominant culture. How did they assert their presence in the urban landscape despite their lack of political power?

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Tuesday
Feb 17
7:00pm

Planning for the Jewish Future: Standards for Yiddish in the 20th and 21st Centuries

How does standardizing Yiddish relate to planning a healthy Jewish future? In this lecture, Dr. Rakhmiel Peltz leads us on a panoramic trip through the struggle for standards in society and Jewish culture.

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Wednesday
Jan 28
7:00pm

Toyznt tamen = A Thousand Flavors

Celebrate the release of Toyznt Tamen = A Thousand Flavors, a new recording by Yiddish singer and songwriter Miryem-Khaye Seigel.

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Wednesday
Jan 21
6:30pm

Behind the Lens: New York Jews between the Wars

In this program, four historians dig into the YIVO Institute's archives and present us with a rarely-seen portrait of New York Jewish life in the 1920s and 30s.

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Monday
Jan 12
7:00pm

Live from the Gallery: The Klezmatics Play Letters to Afar

In this evening, the Grammy-winning, New York-based Klezmatics will perform an acoustic version of the score they composed for the installation, along with related music.

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Monday
Jan 5
6:30pm

Poets as Smugglers: Sutzkever, Kaczerginski, and How the Remnants of the YIVO Archive Reached New York

This lecture will tell, for the first time, the dramatic story of how Kaczerginski and Sutzkever “stole” the treasures out of the Vilnius Jewish Museum, secretly moved them across the border to neighboring Poland, and later whisked them across Europe to Paris.

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