News & Features

Author Jeffrey Shandler talks about his book.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN Just about 36 years ago, students in YIVO’s Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies formed a discussion group that met in its members’ apartments. Among the students were several academics who are now considerably further on in their careers. Steven Zipperstein is now the Daniel E. Koshland Professor ...

YIVO presents a panel discussion with European Union Parliament Member, Dr. Leonidas Donskis; award-winning writer and political dissident, Tomas Venclova; Faina Kukliansky, Chair and advocate for the Lithuanian Jewish Community; Saulius Sužiedėlis, of Millersville University; and Mikhail Iossel of Concordia University.

On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 at 7:00pm, Richard Pipes, Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University will deliver a lecture at YIVO about the cataclysmic impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution on East European Jewish life. Attend the event. YIVO was founded in 1925, less than a decade ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The new Hollywood movie The Monuments Men has been drawing renewed attention to the postwar rescue by the Allies of art and other cultural treasures looted by the Nazis.

YIVO’s history is inextricably tied to the work of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program, established by the Allied armies in 1943 to protect important heritage sites on the battlefront. As the war drew to a close, its mission expanded to include the rescue of artworks and other cultural artifacts that had been stolen from the Nazis.

Eddy Portnoy tells the story of how the MFAA saved the remnants of YIVO’s prewar collections in this week’s Forward. Read “How Real 'Monuments Men' Saved Priceless YIVO Yiddish Treasure.”

By JENNIFER YOUNG and LEAH FALK

The YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization recently celebrated its third anniversary, as YIVO welcomed its largest ever Winter Program cohort, seventy students, who took part in eight morning, afternoon, and evening classes over three weeks this past January.

As always, the Winter Program attracted students of all ages, professional backgrounds, and perspectives: rabbinical students, teachers, social workers, lawyers, and architects shared classrooms with novelists, young historians, psychoanalysts, and genealogists.  Our faculty mirrored our student diversity, representing NYU, Columbia, Wesleyan, Trinity, Rutgers, the New School, and even YIVO itself.

On November 15, 1964, the featured guest on YIVO’s radio program was YIVO Chief Archivist Ezekiel Lifschutz, who discussed one particular archival collection under his care: the Papers of Kalman Marmor (RG 205). Marmor (1879-1956) was a Yiddish writer, literary critic, editor, lecturer, and political activist. In 1906, he joined ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN Uriel Weinreich’s Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary, first published in 1968, has become an indispensible resource for generations of Yiddish scholars, as well as anyone else who has ever set out to learn Yiddish. Few realize that the publication of the dictionary might not have been possible without the help ...

YIVO presents a panel discussion with European Union Parliament Member, Dr. Leonidas Donskis; award-winning writer and political dissident, Tomas Venclova; Faina Kukliansky, Chair and advocate for the Lithuanian Jewish Community; Saulius Sužiedėlis, of Millersville University; and Mikhail Iossel of Concordia University.

On Thursday, February 6 at 6:30pm, YIVO, in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute and the Center for Jewish History, will present a roundtable discussion: Jews, Cities and Culture: Hamburg, New York and Kiev, with Emily J. Levine, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Natan Meir, ...