Continuing the Learning and Media Center's Pilot Phase

Continuing its pilot phase this fall, the YIVO Learning and Media Center (YLMC) hosted six visiting groups. Among the groups, there were three schools including Columbia University, The Dalton School, and Bard College. The first visit of the fall took place on September 13 with a visit from the Tamizdat Project, a group of scholars dedicated to creating an online archive of banned and censored authors from the USSR, headed by Hunter College Professor Yasha Klotz. During this visit the group was introduced to YIVO’s institutional history and YIVO’s library by YLMC Educator Susannah Trubman.

The YLMC later collaborated with YIVO archivists Hallel Yadin and Ruby Landau-Pincus for YIVO’s first-ever participation in the annual Open House New York (OHNY) Weekend on Sunday, October 22. OHNY Weekend is an annual festival that opens hundreds of places across New York City to foster discovery. The archivists curated a selection of materials related to New York City for the event. These materials centered on Yiddish theater, daily Jewish life in New York, Yiddish writers, and Jewish food. Landau-Pincus, YIVO Public Programs Associate Julia Rothkoff, and the YLMC Educator were on hand to give context to materials and interact with visitors, while Yadin led hourly tours of the archive stacks.

On November 2, five students from The Dalton School came for a special lesson that incorporated a lecture on YIVO’s history and an abbreviated version of the YIVO Youth Autobiography Contest Lesson, as well as a tour of the archives led by Stefanie Halpern, Director of the YIVO Archives, and a tour of YIVO’s Palestinian Yiddish exhibition given by Eddy Portnoy, YIVO’s Senior Academic Advisor & Director of Exhibitions. Due to the success of the visit, a second visit from The Dalton School was planned, and thirty-two students from Dalton’s Modern Middle East and Food History courses visited. To accommodate the larger size, students were split into groups, alternating between tours of the Palestinian Yiddish exhibit—again given by Portnoy—and a curated selection of Jewish food materials chosen by Trubman and Landau-Pincus.

Between Dalton visits, on November 9 YIVO hosted a group of genealogists for a lesson on YIVO’s landsmanshaftn collection. The group was given a history of landsmanshaftn as organizations and insight into how and why YIVO’s landsmanshaftn archive was created. This was followed by an archival show-and-tell with curated selections from the archive, and a trip by the genealogists to the archive where they were able to search collections that contained materials related to their own family histories.

On November 17, YIVO hosted a beginner Yiddish language class from Columbia University. The class was brought to YIVO by Graduate Instructor Ethan Fraenkel, an alum of YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Summer Program. During their visit, the group was given a presentation about YIVO’s history, a tour of archival stacks led by Halpern, and a chance to peruse the YLMC’s archival lesson kits. During the last section, they tested their Yiddish knowledge by trying to read the archival reproductions in their original Yiddish.

The final YLMC visit for Fall 2023 was on December 11. Seven Bard students who later that evening performed in YIVO’s concert performance of the 1911 operetta Shir-hashirim, fit time into their busy rehearsal schedule to receive an introduction to the YIVO Archives. They were given tips on how to conduct research from Trubman and gained greater insight into the history of Yiddish song with a special presentation by YLMC Director Alex Weiser.

The YLMC is looking forward to visits in Spring 2024 with classes from Stuyvesant and a return from our first visitors, The Frisch School. The YLMC will also be making a special trip, with archival kits in tow, to Park Avenue Synagogue to meet with their teen group. If you are interested in having your class or group visit the YLMC please contact YLMC Educator Susannah Trubman at strubman@yivo.org.