News & Features

An exhibition honoring doctor and Jewish communal leader Tsemakh Shabad (Szabad; 1864-1935) opened at the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) on September 21, 2014. Based on photographs and artifacts from YIVO’s Archives and Library and curated by Edward Portnoy, it explores the life and legacy of a man celebrated not only for ...

On Sunday, October 12, at 6:30pm YIVO presents “Making/History: Reconstructing the Gwoździec Synagogue,” about a ten-year project to rebuild the roof and ceiling of a 17th-century wooden synagogue for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. “Making/History” features the project’s creators, Rick and Laura Brown of Handshouse Studio; Trillium Studios filmmakers with excerpts from their documentary, Raise the Roof; and project funder Irene Pletka.

Helena Gindi, Public Program Director at YIVO, and Rick Brown of Handshouse Studio sat down and spoke about the project, Handshouse’s educational philosophy (“learn by doing”), and why the Browns are in still in awe of Gwoździec. Highlights from their conversation appear below.

Attend the event.
Watch the trailer for Raise the Roof.

Jennifer Young, YIVO’s Director of Education, interviewed Gennady Estraikh, YIVO’s inaugural Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature, about Prof. Estraikh’s upcoming Ruth Gay Seminar at YIVO, Farewell to Communism: Howard Fast and Soviet Yiddish Writers, on Tuesday, October 7, at 7:00pm. YIVO Members have the opportunity to get to know Prof. Estraikh, other members, and the YIVO staff at a Members-Only reception at 5:30pm - RSVP today!

Assemble the letterheads of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals in Europe, North and South America, and Palestine from the 1890s to the eve of World War II in 1939 and you have a portrait of the Jewish world: transnational; diverse in language, political, and religious orientation; and flourishing. Di gantse velt ...

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announces The YIVO Vilna Collections project, a seven-year international project to preserve, digitize and virtually reunite YIVO’s prewar archives located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal. The project will also digitally reconstruct the historic Strashun Library of Vilna, one of the great prewar libraries in Europe. Project partners are The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, The Central State Archives of Lithuania and the National Library of Lithuania.

YIVO’s Director of Education, Jennifer Young, sat down with Gennady Estraikh, YIVO’s inaugural Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature, to ask him about the evening class he will be teaching at YIVO, “Modernism and the Yiddish Imagination.” The class will meet for six sessions on Tuesday evenings, 6:30-8:30, beginning October 28th. Click here for more information, and to register.

There has been little attention paid to the history of letterhead, the pre-printed stationery used almost everywhere by companies, institutions, organizations, and individuals for correspondence. According to "The History of Letterhead,"the first use of the term in English was in 1890, as a new commercial term for printed letter paper. ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on March 14, 1965, host Sheftl Zak sits down with Wolf Mercur, who helped YIVO acquire the papersof famed Yiddish actor, Maurice Schwartz (1890 - 1960). The collection includes 150 scripts by Sholem Asch, Abraham Goldfaden, Jacob Gordin, Peretz Hirshbein, Y.L. Peretz, I.J. Singer, and ...

by JENNIFER YOUNG Let’s get one thing straight: Yiddish is not a dying language. While UNESCO officially classifies Yiddish as an “endangered” language in Europe, its status in New York is hardly in doubt. According to some estimates, Yiddish is the fifth most commonly spoken language in Brooklyn, behind English, Spanish, ...

"A woman’s path extends from the stove to the door. / Here in the USSR without God, the woman’s path leads everywhere." Bezbozhnik u stanka (The Godless at the workplace), 1927. On June 16, 2013, Elissa Bemporad spoke at YIVO about her book, BecomingSoviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Indiana University Press), a ...