News & Features

This third episode, which originally aired on April 19, 1964, features host Sheftl Zak interviewing Michael Zylberberg, journalist and YIVO representative in London. Zylberberg, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, discusses Jewish life and Yiddish in London and his work collecting documents and other historical materials. His collection, which deals extensively with Polish and Jewish anti-Nazi resistance, is in the YIVO Archives (Michael Zylberberg, Papers, RG 493).

פֿון איציק גאָטעסמאַן

In Yiddish literature the building of the sukkah was often portrayed with humor - suddenly every Jew becomes an architect! But Dr. Gabrielle A. Berlinger's research on Sukkot in contemporary southern Tel-Aviv shows how the sukkot structures in a struggling community display individual creativity and a variety of expressions of the ritual; all going on as political and social issues of the day intersect with vernacular religion.

דער ענטפֿער אויף דעם העברעיִשן קינדערליד „למה סוכּה זו?" איז מער קאָמפּליצירט ווי מען וואָלט זיך פֿאָרגעשטעלט, לויט דער פֿאָרשונג פֿון ד״ר גבריאלה בערלינגער, אַ מומחה אין פֿאָלקלאָר און פֿאָלק־אַרכיטעקטור, און אַן „אַנדרו־מעלאָן נאָך־דאָקטאָראַט־חבֿר" בײַם „באַרד־גראַדויִר־צענטער". זי האָט עטלעכע יאָר פֿאַרבראַכט אין ישׂראל און עטנאָגראַפֿיש געקוקט אויף די סוכּות אין לאַנד: ווי אַזוי מען בויט זיי, ווער בויט זיי, און וואָס פֿאַר אַ ראָלע זיי שפּילן אין דער משפּחה און קהילה.

As YIVO mourns the passing of our longtime music archivist Chana Mlotek, we look back at what may be the first mention of her in Yedies: News from YIVO, in June 1948, four years after she arrived at YIVO to be secretary to YIVO’s research director Max Weinreich. This article from ...

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research mourns the death of its longtime music archivist, Chana Mlotek, known worldwide for her expertise on the musical traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe.

Senior Archivist Fruma Mohrer comments, “Chana had every single piece of music from the YIVO Archives at her fingertips: every arrangement, every title, from the 19th century to the present. She was a woman of vast knowledge, and yet was unfailingly unassuming and unpretentious.” The many catalogs and guides to music collections that Chana created at YIVO are used on a daily basis by composers, conductor, performers, folklorists, and musicologists.

Chana (neé Eleanor "Chana" Gordon) was born on April 9, 1922, in New York in a Yiddish-speaking family. She attended the Yiddish High School of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, and was a graduate of Hunter College.

(NEW YORK, November 4, 2013) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announces with sadness the death of its longtime music archivist, Chana Mlotek, known worldwide for her expertise on the musical traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe. Senior Archivist Fruma Mohrer comments, “Chana had every single piece of music from the ...

On Tuesday, November 19, 2013, The Klezmatics will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at YIVO’s 88th Annual Benefit Dinner and will perform excerpts of a work-in-progress based on the Letters to Afar installation by Péter Forgács and The Klezmatics, (featuring YIVO’s unique collection of Polish Jewish home movies from the 1930s) at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Péter Forgács will also be at the event.

The Klezmatics are world-renowned superstars of klezmer. Since their emergence from New York City’s East Village in 1986, they have revitalized Yiddish music for the 21st century. The band has helped to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture, not least through their career-long research and use of materials found in the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings. They have performed in more than 20 countries, released ten acclaimed albums and served as the subject of a feature-length documentary film, The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.

On October 9, 2013, The Klezmatics’ lead vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, who is also YIVO’s Sound Archivist, was interviewed by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman. (This is the second of a 2-part series.)

On Thursday, November 7th, Eliyahu Stern, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, will appear at YIVO for a talk about his new book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (Yale University Press), with moderator Jeremy Dauber, professor of Yiddish literature at Columbia University.

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, Stern offers a new and provocative narrative for understanding contemporary Jewish life, which begins in the East, with the leading Eastern European mystic and rabbinic scholar of the 18th century, Elijah ben Solomon, or the “Vilna Gaon.”

Eliyahu Stern was the Tell fellow at the YIVO Institute in 2004. He is interviewed here by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent's review of Seth Lipsky’s newly published biography of Abraham Cahan, founder of the Forward, was published in the latest issue of Moment Magazine.

On October 11, Jonathan traveled to Vilnius to participate in a meeting of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. The Commission is a member of the European Union’s Platform of European Memory and Conscience and is charged with researching the crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet occupations of Lithuania beginning in 1940, with the aim of creating accurate historical narratives. As a member of the commission, Jonathan’s  specific role will be to work with the sub-group devoted to the crimes of Stalinism in Lithuania.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent's review of Seth Lipsky’s newly published biography of Abraham Cahan, founder of the Forward, was published in the latest issue of Moment Magazine.

On October 11, Jonathan traveled to Vilnius to participate in a meeting of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. The Commission is a member of the European Union’s Platform of European Memory and Conscience and is charged with researching the crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet occupations of Lithuania beginning in 1940, with the aim of creating accurate historical narratives. As a member of the commission, Jonathan’s  specific role will be to work with the sub-group devoted to the crimes of Stalinism in Lithuania.

On Tuesday, November 19, 2013, The Klezmatics will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at YIVO’s 88th Annual Benefit Dinner and will perform excerpts of a work-in-progress based on the Letters to Afar installation by Péter Forgács and The Klezmatics, (featuring YIVO’s unique collection of Polish Jewish home movies from the 1930s) at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Péter Forgács will also be at the event.

The Klezmatics are world-renowned superstars of klezmer. Since their emergence from New York City’s East Village in 1986, they have revitalized Yiddish music for the 21st century. The band has helped to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture, not least through their career-long research and use of materials found in the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings. They have performed in more than 20 countries, released ten acclaimed albums and served as the subject of a feature-length documentary film, The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.

On October 9, 2013, The Klezmatics’ lead vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, who is also YIVO’s Sound Archivist, was interviewed by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman. (This is the first of a 2-part series.)