Past Events

David Biale examines how modern Jewish culture has remembered Jewish Messiahs such as Jesus and Shabbati Zvi, revealing how Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries thought about heretics in Jewish history and how they transmuted heretics into modern heroes.

This annual Hanukkah concert showcases songs and stories that charm and delight, both familiar and new.

Bas Sheve is one of the only known pre-Holocaust Yiddish operas. Presumed lost, it was discovered in 2017 and made its North American debut in the summer of 2022. This panel will discuss the performance with video examples provided.

Hanna Abakunova examines Ukranian-Jewish relations in prewar Soviet Ukraine and how it determined the attitude of the Ukrainian population toward Jews during the Holocaust.

This panel shares information about and highlights from four festivals, workshops, and programs that celebrate klezmer and Yiddish music.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Sonia Kramer, Professor at Pontific Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro/PUC-Rio and coordinator of the Núcleo Viver com Yiddish [Lebn far Yiddish Center]: research, courses, and cultural projects.

Lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist Irena Klepfisz discusses her newly published book, the first and only complete collection of her work, in conversation with Rabbi Ellen Lippmann.

Ekaterina Oleshkevich explores the gender boundaries of premodern Jewish society, challenging the notion that the roles and expectations of boys and girls were separate and distinct.

Mark Kligman (Director of the Lowell Milken Center) interviews Alex Weiser (Director of Public Programs, YIVO) about the YIVO festival, which took place in May 2022.

Celebrate 400 years of Jewish Music and hear the spectacular voices of the future cantors of the Reform and Conservative movements!

Nick Underwood explores how left-wing Yiddish-speaking emigrants from Eastern Europe created a Yiddish diaspora nation in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.

A new documentary created by Joanne Weiner Rudof and Lawrence Langer tells the story of a family that thrived in pre-war Poland and what happened to them when the Nazis invaded.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Adah Hetko, a Yiddish singer, songwriter, and educator.

Join YIVO and the Yiddish Book Center for the New York premiere screening of Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?), an award-winning documentary about the life and survival of Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever, featuring his granddaughter, actress Hadas Kalderon. A Q&A with the filmmakers will follow the screening.

In this special virtual Tenement Talk, we explore the lives of Jewish women in tenements through women’s novels with Dr. Anita Norich and Dr. Annie Polland.

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub discusses his English translation of Ida Maze's haunting Yiddish portrait of her rural, village, and small-town life in White Russia at the turn of the 20th century.

A fitting tribute to those whose lives forever changed by the events leading up to Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, “The Night of Broken Glass,” this concert will feature pieces by three composers who were forced to re-start their promising young careers as immigrants in new countries.

Sheva Zucker discusses a special project with bilingual audio recordings and texts of twelve Yiddish writers, including Kadya Molodowsky, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, and Elie Wiesel.

Join YIVO archivist Hallel Yadin for an overview of how to access YIVO’s digitized holdings. This program will go over the portals that contain digitized archival and library materials, as well as tips for navigating each portal effectively.

This concert explores a selection of Viennese Jewish composer Hugo Kauder's vocal music, piano music, and chamber music, including the newly available Violin Sonata in a minor.

This lecture will look at work by self-translating writers such as Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, Hersch Dovid Nomberg, and Zalman Shneour to explore the ways authors and critics thought about self-translation, how they pondered and practiced writing the same work time and again.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Mendy Cahan, founder of the YUNG YiDiSH Library and Cultural center in Tel Aviv.

YIVO's Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser and biographer, scholar and pianist Karin Wagner discuss Viennese Jewish composer Hugo Kauder, his work, and his legacy.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, examines the evolution of Jewish identity under communism and postcommunism, the development of postwar political antisemitism in Poland, and contemporary dimensions of Polish-Jewish relations. All readings, including testimony, memoir, and secondary historical literature will be read in English or English translation.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, studies the myth of Odesa in Jewish literature written originally in Yiddish and Russian. All readings, including prose, poetry, and press, will be read in English translation.

This weekly seminar, conducted in Yiddish, explores the history of women as readers and writers of Yiddish, and reads poetry, prose, and memoirs by Yiddish women writers. It is for people with at least a high-intermediate-level knowledge of Yiddish.

This weekly seminar, conducted in Yiddish, investigates Yiddish reference works pivotal for interpreters, readers, researchers, teachers, translators, and writers. It is for people with a high-intermediate-level or advanced-level knowledge of Yiddish.

Join YIVO archivist Hallel Yadin for an overview on how to do research at YIVO. The program will cover crucial and fundamental questions as well as the basics of how to search for material at YIVO.

This weekly seminar, conducted mainly in Yiddish, glimpses into the fears and fantasies of the past by reading folktales in Yiddish. It is for people with an advanced-beginner-level or intermediate-level knowledge of Yiddish.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner II students.

This weekly standard 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.

Ayala Fader discusses her new book with Professor Josh Lambert, delving into universal quandaries of faith and skepticism, the ways digital media can change us, and family frictions that arise when a person radically transforms who they are and what they believe.

This weekly standard 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.

In this talk, Elly Moseson will explore the variety of conceptions and interpretations of the nightmare in Jewish culture and the range of responses that Jews have taken toward this phenomenon in different periods and places, from the Bible through to the twentieth century.

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

This twice-weekly intensive class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intensive Beginner I&II students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner III students.

This twice-weekly intensive class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intensive Beginner III&IV students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner I students.

This twice-weekly intensive class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intensive Intermediate I&II students.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly conversational class introduces new grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for spring Beginner I Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

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.

In her book Tancerka i Zagłada (The Dancer and the Holocaust), Weronika Kostyrko uncovers the story of dancer Pola Nireńska (1910-1992) whose career was repeatedly interrupted by antisemitism and fascism. Join YIVO for a discussion of this important new biography featuring Kostyrko in conversation with YIVO’s Executive Director Jonathan Brent.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intermediate III students.

This twice-weekly intensive class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intensive Intermediate III&IV students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner I students.

This twice-weekly intensive class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring advanced intensive course students.

Join YIVO for a discussion exploring the history of the YIVO Sound Archive, important areas of the collection, projects the Sound Archive has facilitated, and other interesting stories from the past 40 years.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intermediate I students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner I students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner I students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner III students.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner IV students.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly conversational class introduces new grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for spring Beginner I Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner I students.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner III students.

This weekly conversational class covers grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for students who are new to the Yiddish language or have some exposure to Yiddish and would like a review.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner IV students.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intermediate II students.

For 2022’s commemoration of the Jewish community of Vilna, Justin Cammy discusses the poetic legacy of Yung-vilne and Avrom Sutzkever using an archival document. A mini concert featuring musical settings of poetry of Avrom Sutzkever performed by Adrian Rosas and Ya-Jhu Yang will follow Cammy's presentation.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner II students.

This weekly standard class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Intermediate IV students.

This weekly conversational class develops grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for spring Beginner IV Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

This weekly conversational class covers grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for students who are new to the Yiddish language or have some exposure to Yiddish and would like a review.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for spring Beginner II students.

This weekly conversational class develops grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for spring Beginner IV Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

Former Balanchine dancer Toni Bentley and YIVO's Executive Director Jonathan Brent discuss how researching her new book, Serenade: A Balanchine Story, brought Bentley to YIVO, even though Balanchine was not Jewish.

In this lecture, Tzipora Weinberg will examine Orthodox Jewish poet Hadasah Hirshovitz Levin’s written legacy in the context of lesser-known efforts and publications of her colleagues, to provide a lens into the experiences of an unknown group of traditionalist women in greater Jewish Lithuania.

YIVO is proud to announce a study tour to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Prague. This tour will explore the history of Russian and Soviet Jewry, as well as visit some of the major attractions of these two Russian capitals. The tour will conclude in Prague, one of Europe’s most beautiful cities and home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe.

Through a reading of Sutzkever before and beyond the ghetto, Justin Cammy explores the connection between nature, landscape, and the search for a contemporary Yiddish spiritual vocabulary.

In this interactive workshop, Teach the Shoah’s professional storytelling director Jennifer Zunikoff and the Chief Curator of the YIVO Online Museum Karolina Ziulkoski will guide you in using storytelling techniques to bring Beba’s story to life.

Marion Aptroot explores Isaac Wetzlar's ideas for reforming Jewish education in Ashkenaz in the mid-18th century.

In this talk, Sonia Gollance will discuss her translation-in-progress of Miryeml and selected texts about Tea Arciszewska by contemporaries such as Y. Y. Trunk, Yosef Opatoshu, and Melech Ravitch.

Yitskhok Niborski explores the mystical themes of Aaron Zeitlin’s writing through the lens of Jacob Jacobson, a play that depicts an imagined second world war in which the whole world is destroyed.

This lecture will follow the careers of Yiddish actresses to illuminate shifting attitudes within society and the Yiddish theater regarding gender.

Anita Norich and Chana Kronfeld discuss Norich’s new translation of Yiddish writer Chana Blankshteyn’s short stories, which brings this collection to English readers for the first time.

This lecture will discuss the migration of Yiddish culture in post-revolutionary Ukraine from Kyiv to Kharkiv, and the subsequent “division of labor” between the two cities.

Due to popular demand and the success of the 2018 tour, YIVO will host its second Literary Tour of Jewish Galicia, where we will read the works of writers such as Peretz, Bruno Schulz, Agnon, Celan, Babel, and many others in the places that they were written, and travel through the historic landscape that shaped them.

Journey with noted historian Dr. Samuel Kassow and acclaimed Australian Jewish author Arnold Zable as we examine the fascinating ways Jewish culture was shaped in these lands.

Barry Trachtenberg introduces the Ashkenazic Jewish experience of exile and displacement that began in the late 19th century and continued through the khurbn years and beyond.

Leyzer Burko contrasts the separate development of Standard Yiddish and Hasidic Yiddish both in Europe and America.

James Loeffler explores what it means to compose art music in Yiddish and whether Jewish culture can exist without nationalism.

Join YIVO for an enlightening journey to Lithuania and Poland. Examine the life that was lived as you reconnect with your own heritage. Discover the remarkable treasures of old Warsaw, Kraków, Vilnius, and the magical Białowieża Forest.

Elias Pitegoff investigates the evolving poetic program of Introspectivism, which was established by Yiddish poets in New York with the aim of producing Yiddish literature beyond Jewish interest before shifting to critique Jewish assimilation in America.

Ghil'ad Zuckermann's new book, Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, tells the story of the Hebrew revival with new insights about modern Israeli Hebrew's connection to the Yiddish language. Join YIVO for a discussion with Zuckermann in conversation with Yiddish poet and linguist Dov-Ber Kerler.

Are we currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance? YIVO’s own community of Yiddish learners has expanded more than 10-fold in the last two years. Duolingo has added Yiddish as a language. Headline after headline touts Yiddish as unexpectedly alive and well. What does this all mean for Yiddish in the 21st century?

This concert features music by Frederic Rzweski alongside the premiere of new works by Derek David, Lainie Fefferman, David Ludwig, Daniel Schlosberg, and Dan Shore. Part of YIVO’s May 2022 festival celebrating Yiddish folksong. This event will take place in person at YIVO and via livestream.

In this lecture, Dr. Paula Ansaldo will explore the development of the South American Yiddish theatre scene and the connections it established with the main Yiddish cultural centers of the time in the U.S. and Europe and with the larger theatrical ecosystem of South America.

Join YIVO for a discussion of the YIVO Folksong Project including examples of material from the project, and a demonstration of how to access this material. This panel will feature the original project director Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin, singer and composer Joshua Waletzky, and YIVO Sound Archivist Eléonore Biezunski. Part of YIVO’s May 2022 festival celebrating Yiddish folksong.

This concert features a showcase of contemporary artists engaged with Yiddish folksong performing material collected as a part of YIVO’s 1973-1975 Folksong Project: East European Jewish Folksong in its Social Context. Part of YIVO’s May 2022 festival celebrating Yiddish folksong. This event will take place in person at the Jalopy Theatre and via livestream.

This concert features music by Stefan Wolpe, Lazare Saminsky, and Joseph Achron, alongside the premiere of new works by Marti Epstein, Aaron Kernis, Anthony Russell/Uri Schreter, Judith Shatin, and Anat Spiegel. Part of YIVO’s May 2022 festival celebrating Yiddish folksong. This event will take place in person at YIVO and via livestream.

Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf’s Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 explores the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine in the wake of the Holocaust and during the onset of the Cold War.

This concert features music by Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Joel Engel, Alexander Veprik, and Aaron Copland, alongside the premiere of new works by Martin Bresnick, Annie Gosfield, Paul Alan Levi, and Alex Weiser. Part of YIVO’s May 2022 festival celebrating Yiddish folksong. This event will take place in person at YIVO and via livestream.

Mentioned in the Bible and discussed in numerous traditional texts, cannabis has long been a part of Jewish life. Join YIVO for the opening of our latest exhibition, including a panel discussion covering the many connections of Jews to cannabis – religious and spiritual, historical, scientific, and more.

The writer B. Rivkin (Borukh Avrom Weinrebe, 1883–1945) is known to scholars today as an important anarchist thinker and Yiddish literary critic. Less known is that Rivkin was also a firm believer in the occult who attended spiritualist séances and speculated about the possibility of telepathic communication.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Zalmen Mlotek, conductor, composer, pianist, and the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF), the longest continuously running Yiddish theatre in the world.

Unlike most of those who created them, a large number of documents produced by the Łódź Ghetto Judenrat survived the Holocaust. In this lecture, Paweł Michna will uncover the artistic contexts of these unique and little known documents, of which the preeminent specimens are held in the YIVO Archives.

In her new book, Ruth R. Wisse reflects on her experience fleeing the Holocaust as a child, living through the birth of the State of Israel, and teaching Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University for more than 20 years. A special collaboration with the Yiddish Book Center, this event will feature Wisse in conversation with author and founder of the Yiddish Book Center, Aaron Lansky.

Zelig Kalmanovich kept a vivid diary during his time in the Vilna Ghetto describing daily life, the hopes and efforts of the people to retain humanity, and his thoughts about the future of the Jewish people and Jewish culture. Join YIVO for a panel discussion celebrating the new English publication of his important testimony.

Drawing on original archival research in Europe and the United States, Andrey Shlyakhter uncovers the role that American Jews played, both wittingly and unwittingly, in the contraband trade that flourished across Soviet borders.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Miglė Anušauskaitė, a Judaica researcher and a cartoonist from Lithuania.

This weekly seminar offers an introduction to Yiddish literature in the Early Modern period. Course materials will be given in Yiddish and English translation, and discussion will be conducted in Yiddish and English. It is primarily for intermediate Yiddish learners.

CHEWDAISM: A Taste of Jewish Montreal is an hour-long documentary following Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman of "YidlLife Crisis" fame as they discover the roots of Montreal's Jewish community through a series of classic Jewish eateries. This screening will mark the New York premiere of the film and will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Batalion and Elman, moderated by Gabriella Gershenson.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, considers memoir, essays, art, architecture, film, and primary sources to examine Jewish Berlin as it was, as it is, and as it is imagined.

Join four distinguished scholars of Jewish, Russian, and Ukrainian studies in a discussion of how we can understand the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Jewish history and how the region's history may inform the future.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, reads and discusses canonical and lesser-known English Renaissance texts featuring Jewish characters and Jewish questions.

This weekly seminar studies Avrom Sutkzever’s literary works in the immediate aftermath of khurbn, along with historical sources. Conducted entirely in Yiddish, it is primarily for advanced Yiddish learners.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, explores Jewish literary works of fiction and nonfiction written during the various Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century.

This weekly reading circle reads selected letters and responses from advice column A Bintel Briv. With texts in Yiddish and discussion partly in Yiddish, it is for those who can comfortably read Yiddish (aloud) or understand it when read aloud to them.

Join YIVO archivist Hallel Yadin for an overview on how to do research at YIVO. All are welcome to attend: scholars, students, amateur researchers, and anyone who has ever been curious about YIVO's vast collections.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, scrutinizes attempts to prosecute individuals for crimes—ranging from war crimes and genocide to local collaboration—across the European continent and explores the complicated relationships between justice, politics, and memory.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, studies the Jewish soldiers who fought in many of Europe’s major wars, both domestic and colonial.

This weekly seminar, conducted in English, explores handmade textiles as a microcosm of the sociopolitical scene within the Eastern European Jewish immigrant community in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

This documentary film tells the story of musician and scholar Moyshe Beregovsky, who crisscrossed Ukraine with a phonograph in hand during the most dramatic years of Soviet history to record and study the traditional music of Ukrainian Jewry.

This weekly reading circle reads selected letters and responses from advice column A Bintel Briv. With texts in Yiddish and discussion partly in Yiddish, it is for those who can comfortably read Yiddish (aloud) or understand it when read aloud to them.

Are you thinking of returning to the Summer Program to continue your advanced studies? Join Summer Program faculty and staff for a brief information session about YIVO’s advanced levels.

Kenneth B. Moss and Steven Zipperstein discuss Moss's newly published book, which traces the complex and painful story of Polish Jewish reckoning with diasporic vulnerability, nationalism’s terrible potencies, Zionism’s promises, and the necessity of choice.

This weekly conversational class covers grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for students who are new to the Yiddish language or have some exposure to Yiddish and would like a review.

This weekly conversational class covers grammar, vocabulary, and conversational basics. It is for students who are new to the Yiddish language or have some exposure to Yiddish and would like a review.

This weekly conversational class develops grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for fall Beginner III Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

This weekly conversational class develops grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for fall Beginner III Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

This weekly conversational class introduces new grammatical skills and sets of vocabulary. It is primarily for fall Beginner II Conversational Yiddish for Heritage Learners students.

Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate Mame-loshn. This session features Cameron Bernstein, an artist and Yiddishist from the Chicagoland Jewish community.

This weekly standard class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intermediate IV students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner I students.

This weekly reading class is for those with working Yiddish literacy, especially those interested in improving reading proficiency for academic or archival research. It is primarily for fall Beginner I Reading Yiddish students.

Join YIVO for scenes of romance, political symbolism, and low comedy in Nahma Sandrow’s translations, performed by Yelena Shmulenson, Allen Lewis Rickman, Shane Baker, and Jakob von Eichel. This event will take place on Zoom and in person. A wine reception will follow for those in-person.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner II students.

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.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intermediate II students.

This twice-weekly intensive class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Intermediate III&IV students.

This weekly standard 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.

This twice-weekly intensive class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Advanced I&II students.

Solomon Simon’s novel The Clever Little Tailor spins tales of a Jewish tailor who impresses kings, judges, thieves, and even giants with his sharp wit. Simon's grandson, David R. Forman, has now translated the novel for the first time into English. Join translator Forman in conversation with literature scholar Miriam Udel, as they discuss Solomon Simon, the newly translated novel, and the future of bilingual English-Yiddish literature.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner IV students.

This weekly standard 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.

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

This weekly seminar analyzes short stories by classic Yiddish writers and Americans. Conducted mainly in Yiddish, it is primarily for intermediate Yiddish learners.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner II students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner III students.

This twice-weekly intensive class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Beginner III&IV students.

This twice-weekly intensive class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Intermediate I&II students.

This twice-weekly intensive class further enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Advanced III&IV students.

This weekly standard 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.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner II students.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intermediate I students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner I students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner III students.

This weekly standard class enhances listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intermediate III students.

This twice-weekly intensive class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Intensive Beginner I&II students.

This weekly standard class develops listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. It is primarily for fall Beginner I students.

Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at YIVO’s Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to take the program online or in person? Join faculty and staff of YIVO's Summer Program for a brief information session.

Lung, tongue, liver, and brains were once among the staples of the Eastern European Jewish diet. Join YIVO’s Vice Chair Irene Pletka for her Awful, Offal Dinner, a tour through culinary delicacies the faint of heart will not want to try at home.

Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at YIVO’s Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to take the program online or in person? Join faculty and staff of YIVO's Summer Program for a brief information session.

In 1986, Eleanor Reissa went through all of her mother’s belongings and unearthed fifty-six handwritten letters from her father in 1949, only four years after Auschwitz. Thirty years later, with her father’s letters as her silent guide, Reissa goes on a journey, unearthing the unknowable about her family’s past and her own present.

Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at YIVO’s Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to take the program online or in person? Join faculty and staff of YIVO's Summer Program for a brief information session.

Join us for a discussion of the renowned Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever’s account of the Holocaust, translated into English for the first time by Justin Cammy, in conversation with YIVO’s executive director Jonathan Brent.

The Tenement Museum and YIVO are partnering to bring you a night exploring New York City in the Yiddish imagination with musical performances from inside the recreated 1890s parlor of the Levine family, immigrants from Eastern Europe.

In January 1989 in Moscow an NGO called Memorial was founded to document and publish the crimes of the Soviet regime. In two recent rulings by the Russian Supreme Court and Moscow's City Court, Memorial has been ordered to shut down. Join YIVO for a conversation discussing Memorial, and the meaning of the Russian government's actions.

A school board in Texas was recently asked by its executive director to contemplate “opposing views” of the Holocaust. Can such views ever accord with reason, or with social, political and religious values? This lecture by YIVO's executive director Jonathan Brent will explore the other side of “normal.”

Conducted in English, this course offers a close reading of Mississippi, a Yiddish play about the Scottsboro Boys debuted in 1935 by Warsaw-based experimental Yiddish theater troupe Yung Teater. The class will read a bilingual script of the play as well as primary sources.

Conducted in English, this course will teach a diverse body of Yiddish lullabies, both folksongs and ones created by beloved poets. Students will have an opportunity to work on proper pronunciation and align the song texts with the rhythm of natural Yiddish speech. Song texts will be provided in Yiddish, transliteration, and English translation.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will transform an ordinary Zoom meeting into a theatrical salon as everyone will take turns reading a Yiddish play aloud—no acting experience required. Discussion of the play will be in Yiddish and English.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will read Yiddish texts published in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will read Yiddish poetry written by everyday people in the ghettos and camps of World War II in an attempt to understand the multi-faceted character and significance of the poetry within the context of historical testimony.

Conducted in English, this course will trace the history of Yiddish cinema from its early years in Eastern Europe, through its Golden Age in both Poland and the United States in the 1930s, into today's renewed interest and possible renaissance. Yiddish films discussed will be subtitled in English.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will read and study the history of Royte pomerantsn, the century-old collection of Yiddish jokes compiled by Immanuel Olshvanger. Towards the eternal attempt to characterize Yiddish humor, the course will discuss the motifs that are joked about and Olshvanger's theory of what is essential to the Yiddish joke.

This course will explore how institutions and individuals, coping with the void left by the Holocaust, established continuity with the past while acknowledging the fundamental rupture that had occurred in Jewish existence.

Freedom is the main idea of American political life, but no one knows what it means. What would it take to have a country of free speakers and free people? In this lecture, Timothy Snyder defines freedom as the capacity to choose among values, envision futures, and realize some of them.

Grace Paley and Philip Roth pose questions about what it means to be a Jew in America, how Jewish life has changed, and where it might be heading. This course will examine the themes, characters, and narrative devices in their stories.

From the origins of Ashkenazi civilization to twenty-first century Yiddish debates, this course will provide a thorough overview of the Yiddish language through linguistical, sociological, and historical lenses.

Nurtured by an assortment of visionaries from multiple diasporas, this course explores the way Jews have used science fiction to explore time, space, and themselves.

This course will focus on the ideas, politics, and culture of Jewish anarchists within the broad context of modern Jewish politics. Topics will include Jewish nationalism, the Russian Revolution, Yiddish literature, morality, violence, and free will.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will examine literary works and folklore collections that explore the social underworld and language of thieves within Yiddish-speaking Jewish life.

From the origins of Ashkenazi civilization to twenty-first century Yiddish debates, this course will provide a thorough overview of the Yiddish language through linguistical, sociological, and historical lenses.

Conducted in Yiddish for advanced beginners, this course will examine the development of the recipe as a Yiddish literary genre. Ingredient lists will be provided before each session so students may cook along in real time if they wish.

Through close reading, this course will explore "the mutterings of mythological delirium" found in the fictional masterpieces and art of Bruno Schulz.

This course will explore the history of European Jews’ uncertain place in America’s culture of race and difference from the period of mass immigration through the contemporary movement for racial justice.

Conducted in English, this course will offer a close reading of Sholem-Yankev Abramovitsh's 1873 landmark novel, Di klyatshe (The Mare). While the course will use an English translation of the novel, Yiddish-readers may read the original Yiddish text.

The former Warsaw Ghetto site is at once a symbol and a place of history. This course will outline the history of the site, examine narrative patterns imprinted in the ground, and consider twenty-first century politics of Poland.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will analyze the topography of pre-WWII Warsaw using texts from literature and the press, archival documents, old and new maps, photographs, and drawings.

Conducted in Yiddish, this course will study original folklore texts as well as their literary metamorphoses in the works of Y. L. Perets and Sh. Ansky. All readings will be in Yiddish.