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The latest news from YIVO
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Through July 26 | Live on Zoom
This summer's Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series takes place on Mondays and Thursdays through July 26, featuring some of the field’s leading scholars and covering topics ranging from history and historiography to literature, poetry, folklore, and theater.
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Monday, June 28 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
THE ASHKENAZI JEWS OF MEXICO
Speaker: Adina Cimet | Adina Cimet discusses the birth of the Jewish Ashkenazi community in Mexico in the 20th century; the community’s structural development and expansion; and the ideological variety, richness, and effervescence of its communal life. Delivered in Yiddish.
Thursday, July 1 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
THE YIDDISH FOLKSONG: A SURVEY
Speaker: Mark Slobin | Mark Slobin situates the “Yiddish folksong” in the context of the general European folksong world as well as the world of the performed expressive culture of ‘Yiddishland’, from prayer through popular song. Delivered in English.
Thursday, July 8 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
YIDDISH ETHNOGRAPHY AND AN-SKI
Speaker: Gabriella Safran | Gabriella Safran explores the connections between Sh. An-ski’s ethnographic work, his play, and the Russian politics of his era. Delivered in English.
Monday, July 12 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
YIDDISH WOMEN WRITERS (PART 1)
Speaker: Avraham Novershtern | Avraham Novershtern looks at how Yiddish women poets struggled, whether openly or tacitly, with the expectation that their work be 'soft' and ‘intimate', dealing with love and, to a certain extent, with sex. Delivered in Yiddish.
Thursday, July 15 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
YIDDISH & ZIONISM
Speaker: Rachel Rojanski | Rachel Rojanski examines the dialectical tensions between the Hebrew ideology of Zionism and the reality that forced it to play a significant role in the development of Yiddish culture. Delivered in English.
Monday, July 19 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
YIDDISH WOMEN WRITERS (PART 2)
Speaker: Avraham Novershtern | Avraham Novershtern continues examining how Yiddish women poets struggled, whether openly or tacitly, with the expectation that their work be 'soft' and ‘intimate', dealing with love and, to a certain extent, with sex. Delivered in Yiddish.
Thursday, July 22 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
"MY HEART IS IN THE EAST" -
HOW YIDDISH SPEAKERS MOVED TO THE EAST
Speaker: Shaul Stampfer | Shaul Stampfer explores the origins of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish population of Eastern Europe. Delivered in English.
Monday, July 26 | 4:30pm - 5:30pm (ET)
STANDARDIZATION IN CONTEMPORARY YIDDISH:
CASE STUDIES FROM HASIDIC JEWS AND YIDDISHISTS
Speaker: Isaac Bleaman | Isaac Bleaman explores standardization in contemporary Yiddish, through two case studies in quantitative (variationist) sociolinguistics. Delivered in Yiddish.
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If you missed our most recent videos, you can watch these by clicking on any of the image below:
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Thomas Kotcheff performance of Joel Engel's Jewish Folksongs Volume III (c. 1920): 10 Jewish folksongs, dances, and Hasidic nigunim in virtuosic piano arrangements. |
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Elaine Leeder discusses eight Jewish women who identified as anarchists, active during the 1920s to 1950s, and explore the complete sexual freedom that these women sought at a time when conventionality and conformity was the norm. |
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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. |
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Samuel Kassow looks at the secret archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Oyneg Shabes Archives, which sought to ensure a Jewish record to tell Jewish history, even if its members did not live to see the Nazis defeated. Delivered in Yiddish. |
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Scholars, archivists, and curators explore the rich world of Jewish children’s literature in pre-WWII Europe through the collections of YIVO and the Bodleian Library. |
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Annie Polland traces how immigration law impacted the European immigrants who settled at 97 and 103 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and how they carved out new lives once they arrived. |
| Watch past live videos and other YIVO updates here. |
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Monday, July 26 - Friday, July 30
A YIDDISH RENAISSANCE
Streaming on Demand.
A free virtual concert celebrating the revival of Yiddish in culture, the arts, and learning across the globe featuring 140+ performers of all ages from around the world—four generations of performers, from 8 to 89 years old. The event will include hits from award-winning NYTF productions, featuring casts from Fiddler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish), Di Goldene Kale (The Golden Bride), On Second Avenue, Di Yam Gazlonim (Yiddish Pirates of Penzance), Amerike The Golden Land, Soul to Soul, Kids and Yiddish, and more. The event will also honor Zalmen Mlotek—and his 50-year career dedicated to Yiddish music and theatre—on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
YIVO is proud to partner with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene on this program.
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Discover
Beba Epstein: The Life of an Extraordinary Girl
The museum will share, free of charge, the treasures from YIVO's archives with the world through the life stories of individuals. The first exhibition features the life of Beba Epstein, a young girl born in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1922. Her autobiography, written in 1933, was discovered in 2017.
Through Beba's story, you will be immersed in different experiences, where you will learn about:
- Family dynamics
- The social changes that occurred between the mid-1800s and early-1900s
- Vacations
- Schools and curriculums
- Jewish Vilna
- Summer Camps
- The world at the edge of the war in the 1930s
- The Holocaust through Beba's harrowing account
- Immigration into the United States
Despite her exceptional fate, Beba is not so different from any other young teenager today.
Have you visited the online museum? We'd love to hear about your experience:
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Registration Deadline Extended through August 31, 2021!
Lift your spirits and nourish your minds and souls with our entertaining and enlightening Shine Online courses, featuring leading scholars and nearly 1,000 archival objects.
Register free today!
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Join us for an exploration into the heart of Jewish food, with never-before-seen archival objects, lectures by leading scholars, and demos by renowned chefs.
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Take a look behind the curtain and enter the world of the Yiddish theater to discover the impact that Yiddish theater continues to have on popular entertainment today.
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Explore music, folktales, rituals, and superstitions as you delve into the richness of Jewish folklore from Eastern Europe with Prof. Itzik Gottesman and special guests.
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Go on an adventure into the history and culture of the Jews of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania from medieval times through the Communist era with Prof. Samuel Kassow.
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Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage Magazine, Everyday People’s Troubles”: A Brif History of Yiddish Advice Radio in the United States (June 15, 2021)
Topic » YIVO Archives
Tablet Magazine, The Sounds of Summer (June 11, 2021, mention)
Topic » YIVO Yiddish Club
Jewish Women’s Archive, What Does Duolingo Mean for Yiddish? (June 8, 2021, mention)
Topic » Yiddish
The Forward, Symposium to explore rich world of Jewish children’s literature in pre-WWII Europe (June 8, 2021, also in Yiddish)
Topic » Jewish Children's Literature in Russian and Yiddish
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