The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—preserving the world's largest archive of East European Jewry. Tweets w/ archival photographs, upcoming events and news.
Whether you want to focus on Yiddish fluency, reading, conversation, or culture, we have the class for you. This fall we are offering a variety of courses, held on Zoom or in person. Join us and students from around the world!
Marek Tuszewicki unveils Ashkenazi Jewish folk medicine in historical, cultural, and social contexts, going beyond the stigma of harmful superstition to understand it in connection with other aspects of daily life.
YIVO has completed a historic 7-year, $7 million initiative to process, conserve and digitize YIVO’s divided prewar library and archival collections. These materials are now digitally reunited through a dedicated web portal and are accessible to worldwide for the first time.
Among the materials being digitized as part of the Jewish Labor and Political Archive is the final letter of Shmuel Zygielbojm, a member of the Bund's Central Committee who begged sought aid for Polish Jewry only to find his pleas fell on deaf ears.
This menorah bong was created by Dave Daily, the owner of Grav, and constructed with the artist Charlie Glass. It inspired YIVO’s exhibit, "Am Yisrael High: the Story of Jews and Cannabis" and is now in YIVO's collections.
“Fascism must be smashed.” Cover of Yugnt shtime (Voice of the Youth), a mimeographed underground Yiddish newspaper put out by the Bund’s youth group Tsukunft, Warsaw ghetto, January–February 1941.
#fromtheyivoarchives
#bund
#yiddishnewspaper
Scholars Jan Grabowksi and Barbara Engelking were found guilty of defamation in Poland for their book documenting Polish behavior towards Jews during the Holocaust. Prof. Grabowski will discuss his response to the verdict as well as its political and scholarly implications.
Researcher Chip Berlet and journalist Talia Lavin will discuss the Far Right’s themes of demonization, scapegoating, conspiracism and apocalypticism and offer their perspectives on how to deal with this toxic social current.
Congratulations to Pammy Brenner on her engagement this Sunday! So moving to learn that David chose to hold the big moment in a location so dear to her heart, the Reading Room, where she spent many hours as an Irene Kronhill Pletka YIVO Research Fellow from 2018-2020!
YIVO mourns the passing of Professor Gershon Hundert, a brilliant scholar of Polish Jewry whose unparalleled contributions to the field continue to resonate. May his memory be a blessing.
Jeffrey Herf examines and challenges misconceptions about who supported and who opposed the Zionist project before, during, and after Israel's founding.
Reb Khaim Yekhiel, an 80-year-old shames (sexton) of a Warsaw synagogue lighting candles for the souls of the dead on the eve of Yom Kippur. Warsaw. Published in the Forward 10.13.1929. Photo by Alter Kacyzne.
From All of Us at YIVO, We Wish You a Happy, Healthy, Sweet New Year!
Photo: Greetings of the children of School Number 25 in the Lodz Ghetto, September 1941. Nachman Zonabend Collection.
#fromtheyivoarchives
Mass demonstration in NYC commemorating the first anniversary of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, on April 19, 1944. Over 30,000 Jews gathered before the steps of City Hall and listened to speeches by Mayor La Guardia and prominent Jewish leaders.
The eight-year project, the largest in YIVO's history, will conserve, process, digitize, and make available online free-of-charge its collections documenting Jewish political, labor, and social movements in the United States and Europe from 1870 to 1992.
Here's a full list of the scholars joining us for the Yiddish Anarchism Conference: Kenyon Zimmer, Tom Goyens, Anna Elena Torres, Mark Grueter, Nina Gurianova, Ben Gidley, Reynolds Hahamovitch, Lilian Türk, Diana Clarke, and Anatole Dolgoff.
Elaine Leeder examines how eight Jewish women, who identified as anarchists in the 1920s to 1950s, sought to maintain complete equality of the sexes through economic independence and maintaining non-conformist sexual relationships.
"The project, the largest archival digitization project in the history of the Jewish research institute, will shine a light on the Jewish Labor Bund, whose archives survived the Nazis and form the core of the collection."
Members of the Paper Brigade who risked their lives to rescue Jewish culture from destruction by the Nazis.
(Left to right) Abraham Sutzkever, Pupke-Welz, and Shmerke Kaczerginski, in the Vilna Ghetto, July 20, 1943
Award winning producer, author, and ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik looks at the phenomenon of African American musicians who performed Yiddish and cantorial music in and for the Jewish community.
The Yiddish for English speakers course on Duolingo is currently in development. Vote now on which dialect they should use for the audio and pronunciation portions.
We know which dialect we'll be voting for!
On August 12, 1952, known as the Night of the Murdered Poets, Stalin murdered the members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee. Learn more about the poetry of Peretz Markish, one of the poets murdered on this day.
Jeffrey Herf examines the events before, during, and after the State of Israel's founding, challenging misconceptions about who supported and who opposed the Zionist project.
Avrom Sutzkever passed away
#onthisday
in 2010. With the Paper Brigade, he risked his life to smuggle books into the Vilna Ghetto so the Nazis would not destroy them.
(L to R) Paper Brigade members Abraham Sutzkever, Pupke-Welz, and Shmerke Kaczerginski. Vilna, July 20, 1943
"Most people don’t know that the global Jewish population still has not recovered from that catastrophe — in 1939, there were about 17 million Jews in the world, and today there are 15 million."
Anita Norich examines works by Yiddish writers (in English translation) who came to the U.S. and reflected both on the European past and American present and future.
Go beyond the stigma of harmful superstition with Marek Tuszewicki to explore Ashkenazi Jewish folk medicine in historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Zivia Lubetkin, along with a network of female couriers, or kashariyot, who smuggled weapons into the ghetto, are part of a largely-overlooked chronicle of women in the Holocaust.
Retracing the history of forced labor camp Treblinka I, extermination camp Treblinka II, and a railway station at the village of Treblinka, Elżbieta Janicka explores geographic, topographic, social, economic, political, culture, and religious contexts of Treblinka.
Between 1940 and 1944, four Spanish priests based in Paris forged baptismal and wedding certificates for more than 150 Jews to protect them from persecution.
Naomi Seidman explores Yiddish translations of the New Testament at this year's Jewish Christmas event. A kosher Chinese food dinner will follow the presentation.
"Living in a ghetto under Nazi occupation with not just their lives but culture under attack, a small group of writers and activists decided to smuggle or hide as many cultural artifacts as they could to save them from being destroyed or repurposed..."
"[YIVO] will digitize the Jewish Labor Bund archive, some 3.5 million pages of documents, photos, flyers and correspondence from revolutionary leaders...making these artifacts accessible to anyone with an internet connection."
The story of
@yivoinstitute
, the Paper Brigade, and the rescue of Jewish artifacts and culture featured in a segment on
@60Minutes
on
@CBSNews
is available to view now:
We are digitizing 3.5 million documents from the Jewish Labor and Political Archive and making them available online free of charge. These invaluable materials contain correspondence between Jewish leaders, documentation on clandestine revolutionary cells, and more.
At the Jewish Teachers Seminary group portrait of the cast, in costumes, of a Purim play directed by Dr. Max Weinreich, Moshe (Moses) Kulbak and Dr. Rosenthal. Vilna, Poland.
#fromtheyivoarchives
#purim
#jewishholidays
Come see our newest exhibition featuring rare, vintage Yiddish typewriters -- some of them more than a century old -- and original typescripts by famous Yiddish writers.
Yiddish writer and Nobel Prize Winner Isaac Bashevis Singer passed away on this day in 1991.
Photo: Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists of Warsaw membership card of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991).
Join us for the American premiere of this documentary film telling the story of musician and scholar Moyshe Beregovsky. During the most dramatic years of Soviet history, he crisscrossed Ukraine to record and study the traditional music of Ukrainian Jewry.
Wishing you a leshone toyve and a happy, healthy, sweet New Year!
Photo: New Year's greeting, undated. Children in a hot air balloon inscribed with blessings for the New Year. YIVO Archives.
#fromtheyivoarchives
#roshhashanah
jewishnewyear
Join scholars, archivists, and curators to explore the rich world of Jewish children’s literature in pre-WWII Europe through the collections of YIVO and the Bodleian Library.
“[Yiddish] contains our heritage, our family, our bubbes and zaydes (grandmas and grandpas), our chicken soup and our kugel, our proverbs and our sayings. Yiddish is not only a language—it’s a culture and it’s a people.”
Explore Jewish attitudes towards death with Maya Balakirsky Katz to provide a lens for studying the construction of identity, selfhood, and collective memory across various periods of Jewish history.
YIVO Opens an Office in London!
"[YIVO] is the hidden gem of the Jewish world, the largest single resource of its kind – and it is about to open a London office." - Jenni Frazer, Jewish News
The Board of Directors and staff of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research express our deep sorrow at the passing of our dear colleague Chava Lapin z”l.
Maya Balakirsky Katz explores Jewish attitudes towards death to provide a lens for studying the construction of identity, selfhood, and collective memory across various periods of Jewish history.
Henry Sapoznik looks at the African American musicians who performed Yiddish and cantorial music in and for the Jewish community, in this talk featuring historic graphics, translations of period Yiddish newspapers, and a 1923 Yiddish and Hebrew recording of Thomas Jones LaRue.
“Young people — Jewish and non-Jewish — around the globe are discovering through the Yiddish language unknown ways of expressing their ambitions and interests and taking a stand against the brutality and cruelty that sought to annihilate it."
YIVO's Eddy Portnoy delves into the a group of poets and scholars who risked their lives to save Jewish books and materials from YIVO’s collections from the Nazis and the Soviet Union.
Be a part of this year's summer program and discover Yiddish through language, history, and culture classes, a theater workshop, lectures by visiting scholars, a Yiddish song workshop, and more.
YIVO is launching remote research sessions with a YIVO archivist starting April 8. Researchers will have the opportunity to go through YIVO Archives materials of their choosing with a YIVO archivist via Zoom.
A gathering of women and children around Rosh Hashanah at the Lug River, for the observance of the tashlich ritual of symbolically casting their sins into the water. Uściług.
#fromtheyivoarchives
Yiddish enthusiasts the world over, join the YIVO Yiddish club to celebrate mame-loshn. Our first session will feature writer Michael Wex for a discussion of Yiddish comedy and Purim.
If you missed our March 10 event, where researcher Chip Berlet and journalist Talia Lavin discussed how the far right’s internal dynamic and why it drives participants to violence, watch it online now.
YIVO recently received a collection of rare photographs taken by Jacob Rosofsky/Reshefsky, secretary of the (illegal) Bund in Moyzr, who was sentenced to exile in Archangel from 1903-1905.
A municipality in Ukraine pledged to return to Jewish ownership what’s left of a 17th-century synagogue that the Nazis partially destroyed and the Soviets turned into a sports school.
Men stand with open prayer books, performing Tashlekh (a ceremony in which Jews traditionally gathered at a body of water to symbolically cast away their sins from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur). Siauliai, Lithuania, ca.1930's.
#fromtheyivoarchives
Discover the now forgotten Black cantors–Mendele der Shvartser Khazn, Reb Dovid Kalistrita, Abraham Ben Benjamin Franklin, Thomas LaRue Jones, and Goldye di Shvartse Khaznte–who performed Yiddish and cantorial music in and for the Jewish community.