The YIVO Learning and Media Center Hosts Its First Pilot Programs

It was an amazing opportunity to learn about our history. The direct primary sources tells us so much on events and life throughout Jewish history.

— Ahava Bak, Frisch Student

This spring, the YIVO Learning and Media Center (YLMC) held pilot programs with the Frisch School (a modern Orthodox school) and the Riverdale Country School (a pre-K through grade 12 independent school).

In May, 54 students visited from the Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey. Their trip focused on YIVO’s history, the nature of archives, working with primary source documents, and interwar Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Students read excerpts from YIVO’s 1934 and 1939 Youth Autobiography contests, which were each paired with a curated archival box filled with museum- quality reproductions of photos, school assignments, posters, and more from YIVO’s archives. Students encountered primary source artifacts of the Jewish past while learning about archives and the kinds of items they preserve.

The lesson concluded by turning the question of archives to the students: what would they want to save for the future? Their answers — their own Shabbat rituals, material culture, hobbies, and family’s stories — were a poignant testimony that the lesson helped the students bridge the gap between their experiences and the Jewish world of the past preserved by YIVO with its collections.

In June, eight students came from the Riverdale Country School in New York City. The youngest was a recently graduated 8th grader and the oldest was a rising high school senior. These students were part of an optional intensive program exploring Jewish history and heritage in New York. In four, 2-hour lessons, the students learned about YIVO’s history, archival research methods, landsmanshaftn (Jewish mutual aid organizations), and Yiddish theater. The lessons utilized museum quality reproductions, a tour of the archives, and encounters with authentic archival materials introduced to the students by archivists at YIVO.

Following these lessons the students returned for three more visits, this time as researchers. Using what they had learned, the students worked on research projects inspired by their time in the archives. One student wrote a short story inspired by historical figures encountered in his research. Another student created art based on archival materials she encountered.

These programs, the first of many, give students the tools to engage with archival materials and bring Jewish history to life in a whole new way.

View photos from the visits: