News & Features

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent and Max Weinreich Center Academic Advisor Eddy Portnoy were featured on the September 13 "Please Explain" segment of The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC/NPR), discussing the history, roots and culture of Yiddish. Berlin's Svetlana Kundish Wows at Yiddish Songfest The Forward’s Shmooze reviewed the September 9th program, “Festival ...

Sixty-three years ago, YIVO honored historian Simon Dubnowwith this special postal mark. The caption explains that a year earlier, YIVO had created a mark to commemorate classic Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem.

(NEW YORK, September 17, 2013) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is pleased to announce the appointment of the first Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar, Dr. Steven Zipperstein, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. The Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar will conduct a graduate-level seminar in ...

On September 16, 2013, Jason Lustig, a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at UCLA, will deliver a lecture at YIVO on his ongoing research on the emergence of modern Jewish archives from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1950s. Lustig is the recipient of the Max Weinreich Center's current Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellowship and the Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Fellowship.

Here is an excerpt of his interview with Yedies editor Roberta Newman.

Author Daniel Soyer talks about his book.

YIVO Fall Yiddish Classes
All classes will be held at the YIVO Institute, 15 W. 16th St., NYC, in the third floor conference room.

Elementary Yiddish
Eve Jochnowitz
THURSDAYS, OCTOBER 10TH THROUGH DECEMBER 19TH, 6:30 PM-8:30 PM (10 sessions)

Eve Jochnowitz is a Yiddish instructor, and lecturer in Jewish Culinary History at Living Traditions Klezkamp. She recently completed a doctoral dissertation on the subject of Jewish culinary ethnography at New York University. She blogs in English and Yiddish at inmolaraan.blogspot.com and is the co-host with Rukhl Schaechter Ejdelman of Est Gezunterheyt!, a cooking show in Yiddish. She is the translator, annotator, and adapter of the forthcoming YIVO publication, Fania Lewando’s Vegetarian Cookbook, originally published in Vilna in 1938.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN While there is plenty of Jewish anxiety these days about Jews associated with Wall Street scandals and financial scams (e.g., Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme), attention paid to Jewish perpetrators of non-white-collar crimes is considerably less common. Not so, it seems, in September 1950, when this item, “Criminality Among ...

Lana Adler, a recent graduate of Hampshire College, is assisting Acquisitions Archivist Leo Greenbaum in the YIVO Archives. Editor Roberta Newman interviewed her recently about her experiences as an intern.

RN: Can you tell us what you’re working on right now, Lana?

LA: Right now, I’m going through items that have been recently donated to the YIVO Archives. These include unpublished memoirs, family histories, letters, various types of documents, photographs, and pamphlets. They’re extremely varied and super interesting. I’m making a definitive list for publication in Yedies and also picking out things that might be of particular interest for special features.

I’m a huge historical voyeur! I really enjoy these basic pieces of people’s lives, such as letters talking about pretty mundane things. It might not seem important because it’s just one person, but to me it’s really cool. It gives me a chance to commune with that person a little bit. I also really like looking at historical documents, which are pieces of time that has passed.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN As the end of World War II drew near, attention began to shift to what might immediately follow in the postwar era. While the full magnitude of the destruction of Jewish life in Europe was still beyond the grasp of most observers, it was clear to those who ...

Find out more about the 2013 Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.