News & Features

This second episode, which originally aired on January 19, 1964, features host Sheftl Zak interviewing Reva Mark, daughter of scholar Yudl Mark, about her work collecting materials about American Jewish life in the early 20th century, a joint project between YIVO and the Joint Board of the Cloakmakers Union, and ...

Every month, the YIVO Library receives complimentary copies of books whose content has been drawn in part from research done by the authors in the YIVO Archives and Library. Below is a partial list of books published in 2012 and 2013.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN In August 1935, YIVO inaugurated a new art museum, during its international conference, when the YIVO building was full of scholars from around the world, as well as other visitors. As the December 1935 issue of Yedies reported, the ribbon was cut on a new gallery named in ...

On Tuesday, October 22, Antony Polonsky, the Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University will appear at YIVO to discuss his monumental three-volume The Jews in Poland and Russia (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization). He is interviewed here by Yedies Editor Roberta Newman. RN: Why did you see a need ...

On Monday, October 21, 2013, YIVO and the Center for Jewish History will host Sex, Yiddish and the Law: Jewish Life in Metz in the 18th Century, in conjunction with an exhibition, a conference and two other public programs celebrating the pinkas (register) of the bet din (rabbinic court) of the Jewish community of Metz, France, two leather-bound volumes preserved in the YIVO Archives. Brimming with details of commercial transactions involving Jews and non-Jews, family law, inheritance, modes of jurisprudence, and recourse to civil courts, the pinkas is a monument to an extraordinary community and its remarkable rabbinical court.

Visit the exhibition and symposium website and buy tickets to the events.

Professor Jay Berkovitz of the University of Massachusetts is the author of the upcoming book, Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court 1771-1789 (Brill), a transcription and annotations of the 400,000-word document.

On September 9, he sat down with Yedies Editor Roberta Newman to talk about the pinkas. This interview is the second in a three-part series.

Jay Berkovitz talks about Yiddish and sex in the Pinkas of Metz.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN In 1971, YIVO’s Annual Conference had, as its focus, the past hundred years of Jewish life in the United States. This was no strictly celebratory look at American Jewish history and culture, however. On the contrary, Yedies reported that many of the papers delivered at the conference commented ...

In 1939, Noah Golinkin, a student at Yeshiva University in New York, lately arrived from Vilna, wrote a booklet about YIVO for the Amopteyl, YIVO’s American division. His son, Professor David Golinkin, translated the booklet into English as a memorial on the occasion of his father’s tenth yahrzeit.

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Introduction to the English Translation

My father, Rabbi Noah Golinkin z"l, was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, on the eighth night of Chanukah, 1913, to Rabbi Mordechai Ya'akov and Chana Chaya Freida Golinkin. When he was about seven years old, his family fled to Vilna in order to escape the Petlyura massacres.

The rest of his life can be divided into four periods.[1] He spent his formative years, ca. 1920-1938, in and around Vilna where he studied at the famous Ramayles Yeshiva together with the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, as well as in a Polish gymnasium. He also spent time at YIVO, as is evident from this pamphlet. After graduating with a law degree from the Stefan Batory University in Vilna, which was rife with anti-Semitism, he realized that there was no future for the Jews of Poland. In February 1937, he wrote to Yeshiva University in New York and asked to study there; he finally arrived in the U.S. with a student visa in June of 1938.

In 1939, Noah Golinkin, a student at Yeshiva University in New York, lately arrived from Vilna, wrote a booklet about YIVO for the Amopteyl, YIVO’s American division. His son, Professor David Golinkin, translated the booklet into English as a memorial on the occasion of his father’s tenth yahrzeit. Introduction to the ...

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