News & Features

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research mourns the death of its longtime music archivist, Chana Mlotek, known worldwide for her expertise on the musical traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe.

Senior Archivist Fruma Mohrer comments, “Chana had every single piece of music from the YIVO Archives at her fingertips: every arrangement, every title, from the 19th century to the present. She was a woman of vast knowledge, and yet was unfailingly unassuming and unpretentious.” The many catalogs and guides to music collections that Chana created at YIVO are used on a daily basis by composers, conductor, performers, folklorists, and musicologists.

Chana (neé Eleanor "Chana" Gordon) was born on April 9, 1922, in New York in a Yiddish-speaking family. She attended the Yiddish High School of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, and was a graduate of Hunter College.

(NEW YORK, November 4, 2013) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announces with sadness the death of its longtime music archivist, Chana Mlotek, known worldwide for her expertise on the musical traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe. Senior Archivist Fruma Mohrer comments, “Chana had every single piece of music from the ...

On Tuesday, November 19, 2013, The Klezmatics will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at YIVO’s 88th Annual Benefit Dinner and will perform excerpts of a work-in-progress based on the Letters to Afar installation by Péter Forgács and The Klezmatics, (featuring YIVO’s unique collection of Polish Jewish home movies from the 1930s) at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Péter Forgács will also be at the event.

The Klezmatics are world-renowned superstars of klezmer. Since their emergence from New York City’s East Village in 1986, they have revitalized Yiddish music for the 21st century. The band has helped to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture, not least through their career-long research and use of materials found in the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings. They have performed in more than 20 countries, released ten acclaimed albums and served as the subject of a feature-length documentary film, The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.

On October 9, 2013, The Klezmatics’ lead vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, who is also YIVO’s Sound Archivist, was interviewed by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman. (This is the second of a 2-part series.)

On Thursday, November 7th, Eliyahu Stern, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, will appear at YIVO for a talk about his new book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (Yale University Press), with moderator Jeremy Dauber, professor of Yiddish literature at Columbia University.

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, Stern offers a new and provocative narrative for understanding contemporary Jewish life, which begins in the East, with the leading Eastern European mystic and rabbinic scholar of the 18th century, Elijah ben Solomon, or the “Vilna Gaon.”

Eliyahu Stern was the Tell fellow at the YIVO Institute in 2004. He is interviewed here by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent's review of Seth Lipsky’s newly published biography of Abraham Cahan, founder of the Forward, was published in the latest issue of Moment Magazine.

On October 11, Jonathan traveled to Vilnius to participate in a meeting of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. The Commission is a member of the European Union’s Platform of European Memory and Conscience and is charged with researching the crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet occupations of Lithuania beginning in 1940, with the aim of creating accurate historical narratives. As a member of the commission, Jonathan’s  specific role will be to work with the sub-group devoted to the crimes of Stalinism in Lithuania.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent's review of Seth Lipsky’s newly published biography of Abraham Cahan, founder of the Forward, was published in the latest issue of Moment Magazine.

On October 11, Jonathan traveled to Vilnius to participate in a meeting of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. The Commission is a member of the European Union’s Platform of European Memory and Conscience and is charged with researching the crimes of both the Nazi and the Soviet occupations of Lithuania beginning in 1940, with the aim of creating accurate historical narratives. As a member of the commission, Jonathan’s  specific role will be to work with the sub-group devoted to the crimes of Stalinism in Lithuania.

On Tuesday, November 19, 2013, The Klezmatics will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at YIVO’s 88th Annual Benefit Dinner and will perform excerpts of a work-in-progress based on the Letters to Afar installation by Péter Forgács and The Klezmatics, (featuring YIVO’s unique collection of Polish Jewish home movies from the 1930s) at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Péter Forgács will also be at the event.

The Klezmatics are world-renowned superstars of klezmer. Since their emergence from New York City’s East Village in 1986, they have revitalized Yiddish music for the 21st century. The band has helped to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture, not least through their career-long research and use of materials found in the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings. They have performed in more than 20 countries, released ten acclaimed albums and served as the subject of a feature-length documentary film, The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.

On October 9, 2013, The Klezmatics’ lead vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, who is also YIVO’s Sound Archivist, was interviewed by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman. (This is the first of a 2-part series.)

On Monday, November 4, YIVO will host a panel discussion in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Beilis Trial, a cause célèbre of its time. In 1911, a Jewish factory clerk, Mendel Beilis in Kiev, was falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy. His trial in 1913 was ...

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013, Karen Auerbach,Kronhill Lecturer at Monash University, spoke at YIVO about her new book, The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw After the Holocaust. The book traces the history of ten families that were neighbors in one building as a case study of Jewish ...

פֿון איציק גאָטעסמאַן

Itzik Gottesman reports on how the music and texts of the songs of a 19th century badkhn, wedding entertainer, have been "reunited" in the YIVO archives, sound recording included!

דעם 22סטן יולי 2011 איז געשטאָרבן סילוויאַ האָפֿמאַן, אויך באַקאַנט ווי סילוויאַ יונין, אַ שרײַבערין און קינסטלערין, ווי אויך די אַלמנה פֿונעם שרײַבער, פּאָעט און פֿאָלקלאָריסט וואָלף יונין (1908 — 1984). צווישן אירע און איר מאַנס פּאַפּירן וואָס זי האָט איבערגעלאָזט דעם ייִוואָ־אַרכיוו, האָט זיך געפֿונען אַ ביכעלע, אַ זאַמלונג לידער, געשריבן פֿונעם בדחן משהלע שטאַם, בײַם סוף פֿונעם 19טן יאָרהונדערט פֿונעם גאַליצישן שטעטל גלינע. דער קלעזמער־פֿידלער בעריש קאַץ, שטאַמס אַ פּלימעניק, האָט דאָס ביכעלע איבערגעגעבן וואָלף יונין אין די 1940ער יאָרן.

משהלע שטאַם איז געווען אַ גוט־באַקאַנטער בדחן און איז אויפֿגעטראָטן אויף חתונות נישט נאָר אין גלינע, נאָר אויך אין די אַרומיקע שטעטלעך פֿון צענטראַל-גאַליציע. דאָס ביכעלע איז באמת אַן אוצר פֿאַר דער פֿאָרשונג פֿון דער ייִדישער פֿאָלקסליטעראַטור, אַ שאָד נאָר וואָס מע קען נישט די מעלאָדיעס צו די לידער.