GO TO YIVO INSTITUTE HOME

News from YIVO: Fall 2026

Aug 25, 2026

YIVO Signs Agreement to Digitize the Vernadsky National Library’s An-ski Collection

In March 2026, YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent and Chief of Staff Shelly Freeman traveled to Kyiv to formally sign a contract between the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (VNLU), Archival Information Systems—a Ukraine-based digitization company—and YIVO to digitize and preserve VNLU’s An-ski Collection.

During the visit, Brent and Freeman also met with representatives of the Ukrainian State Archives, which holds extensive Jewish materials, to discuss a memorandum of understanding aimed at the digitization of these collections and expanding their global accessibility. They were accompanied on the trip by Gal Beckerman of The Atlantic, who reported on YIVO’s work as well as on daily life in Kyiv.

Jonathan Brent Speaks at London Book Week

Jonathan Brent took part in the prestigious London Book Week festival in an online event on March 3, 2026. In conversation with German historian Christoph Dieckmann, he examined YIVO’s vital role in preserving European Jewish culture, while reflecting on how history and scholarship continue to confront the Holocaust’s profound impact on European civilization and humanity. The session was moderated by Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden.

New Partnership Connects Ukrainian Students with YIVO’s Yiddish Program

In spring 2026, YIVO launched a new initiative in partnership with Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine. Named the Lilka Scholarship and funded with generous support from the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, this initiative enables students at Ivan Franko University to enroll—for full university credit—in online Yiddish language courses taught by YIVO’s distinguished faculty at the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies.

This program creates a rare and meaningful exchange between Eastern Europe and North America. Students study alongside peers from around the world, gaining not only linguistic skills but a deeper understanding of the role Yiddish played in shaping the societies of Eastern Europe. Students will in turn bring this knowledge back to their own communities—strengthening local research, cultural institutions, and public engagement with Jewish history.

The initiative carries particular urgency at this time for students in Ukraine, who continue to pursue their university education under the strain of war. By providing access to YIVO’s courses, the program offers both academic continuity and vital intellectual support. For the first pilot of this initiative, YIVO was proud to welcome 15 students from Ivan Franko University, with more expected to participate in the upcoming fall semester and beyond.

Summer Program Graduate Becomes Published Translator

YIVO was proud to welcome back Yiddish translator Tamara Helfer for a talk on her recently published translation of The Winding Road: My Childhood Years, an autobiographical debut novel by Rokhl Feygenberg originally published in 1905. The novel, a fictionalized account of Feygenberg’s childhood in a small shtetl in the 1890s, was published when the author was only 20 years old. Tamara, who learned Yiddish at YIVO, is a four-time graduate of the YIVO-Bard Summer Program (‘20, ‘21, ‘22, and ‘23) and was a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow in 2023. A former research astronomer and science educator, Tamara has since turned her focus from the stars to Yiddish translation. She spoke to the 2026 cohort of Summer Program students about Feygenberg’s novel, the process of translation, and her journey to becoming a professional Yiddish translator following her studies at YIVO.

Two New Volumes Published in the Yiddish Voices Series

YIVO has published two new volumes in its Yiddish Voices series, an ongoing collaboration with Bloomsbury Academic that brings important works of Yiddish literature to English-language readers for the first time. Mississippi: A Yiddish Play about the Scottsboro Affair was published in July, followed by Hasidic Warsaw: Reb Zalmen and the Aleksander Shtibl in August.

Together, the books showcase the remarkable breadth of Yiddish literature, exploring subjects from racial injustice in the United States to everyday Hasidic life in prewar Poland. Mississippi, by Leib Malach and translated by Ellen Perecman and Alyssa Quint, is the first English translation of the playwright's 1935 work inspired by the Scottsboro Affair. Hasidic Warsaw, by Yechiel Hofer, is the first English translation of Reb Zalmen, offering a vivid portrait of prayer, community, and daily life in Warsaw's Aleksander Hasidic community.

Made possible through the generous support of the family of Harriet R. Yassky, the Yiddish Voices series is curated by Alyssa Quint and Elissa Bemporad.

YIVO Participates in the Municipal Arts Society’s Annual “Jane’s Walk” Festival

On May 1 and May 3, YIVO participated in the Municipal Arts Society’s annual “Jane’s Walk” festival. Each year, MAS hosts over 200 in-person and virtual walking tours around New York City related to its history. This year, for the festival, YIVO Learning and Media Center Educator Susannah Trubman created a walking tour dedicated to Yiddish theater history in the Lower East Side. The walk began at the former site of Jacob Adler’s Grand Theater and finished in Union Square Park, not far from the site of the Modicut Puppet Theater Workshop. Along the way, Trubman used scans from YIVO’s vast theater collections to help illustrate the rich history of Yiddish performance. Each walk sold out and had long waitlists. If you missed them, Trubman will be hosting the program again this fall, on October 25.

Ben Kaplan Presents at the JCC Manhattan’s Paul Feig z"l Tikkun Leil Shavuot

On May 21, 2026, YIVO’s Director of Education Ben Kaplan presented a lecture entitled, “The Jewish Photographers of Eastern Europe and America,” for the JCC Manhattan’s Paul Feig z"l Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an annual event celebrating the holiday of Shavuot through study, film, music, dance, conversation, and more. The lecture focused on two Jewish photographers whose collections are housed at YIVO: Alter Kacyzne and Menachem Kipnis. The presentation addressed the history of Jewish photographic practice in Eastern Europe and its subsequent continuation in the United States, where Jewish photographers had a major influence on the development of photography in the 20th century.

Yiddish Leads to Forever Friends

In February 2021, as the COVID pandemic spread and most people were sequestered at home, a handful of eager Yiddish learners found a new community and life-long friendships through a YIVO Beginner I Yiddish class on the then-relatively unknown digital platform Zoom. Some of them had heard Yiddish in their childhood homes; others wanted to learn a bisl more about their family roots. For more than five years now, this group of devoted friends has continued studying together in numerous YIVO classes, schmoozing together over coffee and Yiddish articles every Sunday morning, and visiting each other here and abroad. Connected by their mutual love of the mame-loshn, they’ve shared simchas, grief, worries, and joys (in addition to meals, advice, dog training tips, travel suggestions, and a sakh gelekhter!). This special khevre includes Sherry Brandt-Rauf, Stacey Hader Epstein, Susan Rose, Edie Rothschild, Joe Silber, and, until very recently, their beloved Bob Weisberger z”l. These devoted friends, brought together by Yiddish, remain committed to learning and creating memories together. Biz hundert un tsvantsik!

YIVO Hosts Inaugural Summer Semester

This July, YIVO offered the Summer Semester, a mini-semester designed to bridge the months-long gap between the Fall and Spring semesters. The semester offered review courses at the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced levels to help students transition to their next level of learning, as well as seminars exploring topics in history, literature, culture, and more. The incredible international faculty included Moishele Alfonso, Sonia Dratwa-Pinkusowitz, Lucas Fiszman, Samuel Glauber, Rose Mintzer-Sweeney, Eliezer Niborski, Philip Schwartz, Vera Szabó, Karolina Szymaniak, and Michael Wex. Overall, the semester featured 13 classes taken by 163 students from 32 U.S. states and across 14 countries.

Staff Highlight

by MELANIE MEYERS, Development Officer

I have had a long professional history in the world of Jewish libraries and archives, and I am now very happy to be entering a new phase of my career, not as a collection manager, but as a development officer. I began at YIVO in July of this year, as a Development Officer for Institutional Giving, to focus on grant writing and organizational gifts. I most recently served as an instructor in the JTS/ Columbia Judaica Librarianship Program, where I taught the class on Jewish Archives and also supervised student independent study projects. Previously, I was also an adjunct instructor at the Palmer School at Long Island University, teaching a variety of classes for the Rare Book and Special Collections program. I have worked with special collections in a variety of settings, including private, nonprofit, and academic institutions and have served as an outside evaluator and consultant for organizations seeking to improve their public services and access. My previous collection management position was Deputy Director and Chair of Collections and Engagement at the American Jewish Historical Society. Prior to joining AJHS in 2018, I was the Senior Manager for Reference and Outreach at the Center for Jewish History, New York City, where I managed public access for the Reading Room and Genealogy Institute, which is where I first became acquainted with the YIVO collections and staff. I am delighted to be part of the team, and I hope to help YIVO grow and thrive in its second century.