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About YIVO
Library & Archives
  Click to enlargeThe dais at the first YIVO Conference, Vilna, 1929. Among the scholars and communal leaders on the stage are (seated, center) Tsemah Szabad, (second to Szabad’s right) Max Weinreich, (second to Szabad’s left) Perets Hirshbeyn, (standing, third from right) Zelig Kalmanovitsh, and (seated, second from right) Eliyahu Tsherikover. (YIVO) |
Founded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (Wilno, Poland, now Vilnius, Lithuania), as the Yiddish Scientific Institute, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jewry and to its influence in the Americas. Headquartered in New York City since 1940, today YIVO is the world's preeminent resource center for East European Jewish Studies; Yiddish language, literature and folklore; and the American Jewish immigrant experience. The YIVO Library holds over 385,000 volumes in 12 major languages, and the Archives contains more than 24,000,000 pieces, including manuscripts, documents, photographs, sound recordings, art works, films, posters, sheet music, and other artifacts. YIVO also offers a series of cultural events and films, adult education and Yiddish language classes (including the pioneering Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture six-week intensive summer program begun in 1968), various scholarly publications, research opportunities and fellowships. |
News & Information
| Mlotek, Slobin Receive Honorable Mention for YIVO Publication NEW YORK, 2 Dec. 2008 – The Modern Language Association of America today announced it is awarding its fourth Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for an outstanding scholarly study in the field of Yiddish to Gabriella Safran, of Stanford University, and Steven J. Zipperstein, of Stanford University, for The Worlds of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century, published by Stanford University Press. Chana Mlotek, of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and Mark Slobin, of Wesleyan University, will receive honorable mention for Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive, published by Wayne State University Press. The prize is awarded each even-numbered year and is awarded alternately to an outstanding translation of a Yiddish literary work or an outstanding scholarly work in English in the field of Yiddish. Safran and Zipperstein will each receive a certificate and a check in the amount of $500. Mlotek and Slobin will each receive a certificate. More... |
| Steinberg Charitable Trust Awards $300,000 Challenge Grant for Online YIVO Encyclopedia Project Matching Fund Effort Underway : Cahnman Foundation Pledges $25,000 NEW YORK, Sept. 2008 – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has announced that it has received a three-year, $300,000 challenge grant from the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust to create an online edition of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Under the terms of the grant, YIVO will raise an equal amount in matching funds over the same period, for which The Cahnman Foundation, Inc., of New York has made the first pledge, in the amount of $25,000. More... |
| Lithuanian Prime Minister Visits YIVO NEW YORK, June 2008 – As part of his recent trip to the United States, Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas of Lithuania visited YIVO on June 30, 2008. He was given a tour of YIVO’s Rare Book Room and Archives, followed by a discussion that touched on YIVO-owned Hebrew- and Yiddish-language books, rediscovered in 1989, that are now housed in the Bibliographical Center of the Lithuanian National Library. More... |
| THE YIVO ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE MAKES ITS DEBUT AS THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE WORK ON JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE NEW YORK, Mar. 2008 – For the first time, the centuries-long history and culture of East European Jewry is presented in a reference work representing seven years of research and collaborative scholarly effort. An unprecedented two-volume, 2,400-page resource makes its debut this month as “The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe,” published by Yale University Press. This work systematically represents the history and culture of Eastern European Jews from their first settlement in the region to the present day, reflecting on the ancestry of the vast majority of Jews in the world today. More... |