What I Learned as a Research Fellow on the Project

by RUBY LANDAU-PINCUS

I didn't really know what to expect when I started my work with YIVO. I'm a Yiddish Studies major at Columbia University, having fallen into the major track somewhat accidentally, taking one Yiddish class to satisfy a language requirement and liking it a bit too much. When I originally applied to the research fellowship program that brought me to YIVO, I didn't really think I would get in, as my knowledge of Yiddishkeit at the time was severely lacking. Luckily, at YIVO, you can't help but learn on the job.

On my first day there, my friends in the program and I began our work on the Vilna Collections, having been given the seemingly simple task of tracking which languages were present in various folders of materials. As I quickly discovered, our task was not so easy, as languages would often switch three or four times within a single piece of mail. I was struck by the realization that both the sender and the recipient were likely fluent in all of the languages used in the letter. My own wonderment at this was the result of a lie that I believe many young American Jews such as myself have been fed: that prior to coming to America or Western Europe, all Jews lived solemn, provincial, and uneducated lives. My work with the Vilna Collections woke me up from that belief and showed me the reality of the situation. I read through records kept by Jewish booksellers who shipped materials all around the world. I found the sketchbook of a young boy, which included a drawing of his house, and of his family at a lake. Most of his drawings had birds in them, and I thought about those birds for days, reminded of similar drawings from my own childhood. Some of the documents I worked with had been folded into narrow rectangles, and I got the sense that this was to smuggle them in shoes or clothing seams. The Vilna Collections are not only a testament to our past, but how hard we have always worked to hold onto it. In the age of the internet, that means digitization.

As I now work to transcribe images of records of posters in the Vilna Collections, I am continually amazed by how relevant many of them feel to today, like debates about zionism, or pleas to get inoculated against cholera. The Vilna Collections have me constantly learning and reevaluating my notions about the history of Jewish people, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Ruby Landau-Pincus is a Kronhill Pletka YIVO Research Fellow working on the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections Project.