News & Features

On December 27, 1964, host Sheftl Zak answered questions from listeners. Topics included YIVO’s plans for 1965, including projects related to its folklore collections and the upcoming publication of Uriel Weinreich’s Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (the dictionary was first published three years later, in 1968). From 1963-1976, YIVO had its own ...

On April 29, Tablet Magazine published an interview with Ukrainian dissident Josef Zissels, “The Head of the Jewish Community of Ukraine Speaks Out Against Putin,” by David Mikics. Zissels was interviewed at YIVO after his appearance in the April 24 YIVO program, “What Now? Jews and the Ukrainian Revolution 2014.” The event was reported on in Newsday by Cathy Young.

Cecile Kuznitz, Director of Jewish Studies at Bard College and the author of the new book, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge University Press) visited Vilnius, where she gave a series of lectures and was interviewed for Lithuanian radio. An article about Professor Kuznitz and the book also appeared in the local English newspaper: “New Book Celebrates Vilnius Litvak Legacy.”

On Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 3:00pm, YIVO will present Open Secret: The Jewish Sound in Soviet Music, as part of its ongoing Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series.

Before World War II, the Soviet Union was the only country in the world to officially promote Jewish music. After World War II, Soviet authorities declared that Jewish music did not exist. Yet all along, major Soviet composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Miecyzslaw Weinberg, and Mikhail Gnesin found deep inspiration in the sounds of Ashkenazi Jewish folk music. How did these composers manage to weave Jewish themes into some of the most stirring music of postwar Soviet society? How did they personally navigate the ongoing strictures of artistic censorship and the periodic cycles of antisemitic repression?

In this YIVO event, Professor James Loeffler, Yuval Waldman and the young artists of the Krum Concert Series will explore these questions through a unique pairing of music and words. In a blended lecture-concert, they will present several works including Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, Mikhail Gnesin's Piano Trio in Memory of Our Perished Children, and Miecyzslaw Weinberg's Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes for violin and piano.

Attend the event. 

James Loeffler is an Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia. He also serves as Scholar-in-Residence at the Pro Musica Hebraica Foundation and as Academic Vice Co-Chair of the Jewish Music Forum of the American Society for Jewish Music. His first book, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire was published by Yale University Press in 2010. It received awards from the Association for Jewish Studies, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP). In 2013-2014, he is Dean's Visiting Scholar on the Andrew Mellon Foundation New Foundations Fellowship at the Georgetown University Law Center. There he is working on a book about Jews, Israel, and international human rights.

Born in Russia and educated in Israel, the United States and Europe, Yuval Waldman has enjoyed great success as a violinist, conductor, and educator. Waldman has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel and given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London, and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In 2005, Maestro Waldman founded Music Bridges International, to foster cross-cultural music exchange programs that feature the music of different countries. Under the Music Bridges banner, he organized the successful Young Artsist Strings Competition at the “Tchaikovsky’s Homeland” Center in Izhevsk/Votkinsk, Russia.

James Loeffler is interviewed here by Yedies editor, Roberta Newman.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN When YIVO relocated to the United States in 1940, it wasted no time in establishing itself as a major repository of Jewish history. While it waited to learn the fate of its collections, building, workers, and associates in Vilna, it set out building a new home and mission ...

On Thursday, April 24, YIVO will present “What Now? Jews and the Ukrainian Revolution 2014,” a conversation with Josef Zissels, the preeminent leader of Ukraine’s Jewish community, and moderator, David Fishman. Zissels and Fishman will discuss the political situation in Ukraine today, Ukraine’s relationship to Russia and the European Union (EU), and what Ukrainian Jews and minorities can expect from the new government.

Read Josef Zissels's speech at Maidan.
Attend the event.

YIVO Public Program Director Helena Gindi interviewed David Fishman, professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary about the situation in Ukraine.

by LEAH FALK

Traduttore, traditore, goes the Italian proverb: to translate is to betray. But at YIVO, the opposite seems true. Six recipients of the Yiddish Book Center’s 2014 Translation Fellowships are fiercely loyal YIVO Max Weinreich Center alumni. The fellows include Beata Kasiarz, Helen Mintz, Sarah Ponichtera, Sasha Senderovich, Anna Torres, and Ri Turner.

On December 20, 1964, historian Isaiah Trunk, a YIVO Research Associate and co-editor of the journals YIVO Annual and YIVO bleter, gave this interview to Sheftl Zak, host of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD, about his work researching the Lodz Ghetto and his book, Lodzher geto: a historishe un sotsyologishe ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN I have often marveled at the almost unbelievable accomplishments of the Jewish activists of yore. Dr. Tsemach Szabad (1864-1935),for example, the legendary cultural leader and doctor from Vilna. Playing a leading role in the founding of YIVO in 1925 was only one of his projects in the period ...

Karolina Szymaniak The recipient of YIVO’s Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Fellowship for 2013-2014, Karolina Szymaniak, is an Assistant Professor at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where she also heads the Yiddish Culture Lab. Having earned her Ph.D. in literary and cultural studies from the Jagiellonian University in Kazimierz, Poland, she ...

By JENNIFER YOUNG Professor Magda Teter, an instructor in YIVO’s Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, visited YIVO on April 30 with her class from Wesleyan University, to participate in a full-day workshop on Jewish material culture. Teter’s Wesleyan course in East European Jewish History aims to take students beyond the common ...