News & Features

by ROBERTA NEWMAN On May 23, 2014, we posted an article from the December 1965 issue of Yedies about a visit to YIVO by nuns from Milwaukee who were writing a play based on the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, an anthology of poems and drawings by children in the ...

Sholem Aleichem, his wife Olga, and their three children, Tissa, Lyala (Bel Kaufman’s mother), and Emma, Kiev, 1889. The family portrait was used as a Rosh Hashana greeting card (see Hebrew inscription at bottom). (YIVO Archives) Bel Kaufman, the granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem and the author of the 1965 bestselling novel Up the Down ...

An international conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of YIVO's establishment and the 75th anniversary of its transition to New York will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania on April 21-23, 2015.

This broadcast from February 21, 1965 presents excerpts from two papers delivered at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before: 1. "Variety of Functions of the Yiddish Adjective," a paper delivered by Professor Uriel Weinreich at a session of the Linguistic Circle, about certain cases of the ...

The Yiddish Daily Forward ran two features focusing on YIVO on July 17: A geshikhte fun YIVO [A History of YIVO], a review of Cecile Kuznitz’s book YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture by Gennady Estraikh, YIVO’s new Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature; and Khayem Grades arkhiv antplekt [Chaim Grade’s Archive Revealed], a report on YIVO’s public program "YIVO's Newest Treasure: The Chaim Grade and Ina Hecker-Grade Archive" (July 13). Professor Estraikh is quoted, along with Professor Agi Legutko (director of the Yiddish language program at Columbia University and an instructor in the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazic Civilization) in a Jewish News Service article, "Nearly lost Yiddish language increasingly popular among Jewish college students."

This is the third post in a series about alumni of YIVO’s intensive summer program in Yiddish, offered by YIVO and Bard College. The program, which was established in 1968, is in its 47th year. This year’s session runs from June 23 – August 1, 2014. 

On May 22, 2014, four cultural organizations in Vilnius teamed up to present “Resonances from Vilna,” a concert at the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, featuring works by Jewish composers Joseph Achron, Alexander Krein, and other Jewish Lithuanian composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN In September 1953, Yedies celebrated the 15th anniversary of the YIVO Library and Archives in America with a detailed account of its history, beginning with the establishment of its predecessor, the Central Jewish Library and Archives, which had its first headquarters at 1133 Broadway, an office building which ...

Piotr Matywiecki of Warsaw, Poland has been named the recipient of the 2014 Karski Award. This annual award was endowed by Professor Jan Karski in 1992 for an author of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture.

The winner was chosen by the Award Committee, whose members are Prof. Pawel Spiewak (Director, Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw), Dr. Jonathan Brent (Executive Director YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Dr. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Prof. Szymon Rudnicki, Dr. Joachim S. Russek, Prof. Jerzy Tomaszewski, and Prof. Feliks Tych. The award ceremony will be held in September at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

On Thursday, July 17, 2014, The New York Times reported on the shutting down of the offices of the Congress for Jewish Culture. The organization was founded by writers and intellectuals in 1948 to promote the work of Yiddish language and culture and once also had offices in Paris and Buenos Aires.

Read more about the Congress for Jewish Culture.

The newly donated records will join an existing collection of Congress for Jewish Culture in the YIVO Archives (Record Group 1148).