News & Features

Gennady Estraikh Gennady Estraikh is an expert on Yiddish literary and intellectual history, particularly of the Soviet era. He teaches at New York University, where he is the Rauch Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies, in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He received his doctorate from Oxford in 1996, ...

On November 15, YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent appeared on the Chicago podcast, The Milt Rosenberg Show, where he spoke about Yiddish and the renewal of Ashkenazic civilization. On December 2, Jonathan appeared on the Chicago public radio show, Worldview,to discuss his participation in the International Commission for the Evaluation ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN The YIVO Archives and Library contain many rare manuscripts and books. Some are from YIVO’s prewar collections, rescued from the Nazis by dedicated volunteers in Vilna (Wilno, Poland, present day Vilnius, Lithuania) or recovered with the help of the U.S. Army after the end of World War II. ...

Concert by the Klezmatics at YIVO's 88th gala benefit. "The Klezmatics' deep relationship with YIVO goes all the way back to 1987, when I first started working here. The oytsers (treasures) in YIVO's collections continue to be gems of creative inspiration to us as we approach our 28th year as a ...

by LEAH FALK

Curt Leviant is an esteemed translator, Yiddish scholar, and fiction writer. Among his translations are five volumes of Sholem Aleichem’s work, Chaim Grade’s The Agunah and The Yeshiva, and books by Avraham Reisen, Lamed Shapiro, I.B. Singer, and fabulist Eliezer Shteynbarg. Several of his seven critically acclaimed novels have been translated into major European languages.

For YIVO’s Winter Program, Leviant will teach a course on Yiddish Romantic poet Chaim Grade (1910-1982), “Chaim Grade and the World of Lithuanian Jewry.” In 2013, YIVO acquired Grade’s archive, including 20,000 volumes in multiple languages. (For more information on this acquisition, click here).

by LEAH FALK

Curt Leviant is an esteemed translator, Yiddish scholar, and fiction writer. Among his translations are five volumes of Sholem Aleichem’s work, Chaim Grade’s The Agunah and The Yeshiva, and books by Avraham Reisen, Lamed Shapiro, I.B. Singer, and fabulist Eliezer Shteynbarg. Several of his seven critically acclaimed novels have been translated into major European languages.

For YIVO’s Winter Program, Leviant will teach a course on Yiddish Romantic poet Chaim Grade (1910-1982), “Chaim Grade and the World of Lithuanian Jewry.” In 2013, YIVO acquired Grade’s archive, including 20,000 volumes in multiple languages. (For more information on this acquisition, click here).

On Monday, December 9, 2013, YIVO and the Center for Jewish History will host French and Jewish: Defining a Modern Jewish Identity in the 19th Century, in conjunction with anexhibition, a conference and two other public programs celebrating the pinkas (register) of the bet din (rabbinic court) of the Jewish community of Metz, France, two leather-bound volumes preserved in the YIVO Archives. Brimming with details of commercial transactions involving Jews and non-Jews, family law, inheritance, modes of jurisprudence, and recourse to civil courts, the pinkas is a monument to an extraordinary community and its remarkable rabbinical court.

Jay Berkovitz talks about how the Pinkas of Metz paints a portrait of a Jewish community in the era of the French Revolution.

by SARAH PONICHTERA New York will play host to a brilliant array of Yiddish events this winter, with offerings in music, theater, art, and education. With the recent loss of Chana Mlotek, z”l, music is very much on our minds here at di Nyu-yorkerin, and there is no lack of opportunities to ...

Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) was a pioneer of abstract art and a founder of the avant-garde Suprematist movement in Russia. His painting, Black Square, was the quintessence of his Suprematist project and an outstanding breakthrough in the history of modern art, anticipating the development of geometrical abstraction in the West in ...