YIVO’s 2023 Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization to Take Place Online

(New York, NY) – The 2023 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, will be held online this winter (January 10-27, 2023). The Program will delve into the literature, history, and culture of East European Jewry and offers a diverse lineup of international presenters including museum curator and art historian Maya Benton and historian Jeffrey Herf, along with scholars from leading institutions across the globe.

Into its eleventh year the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization explores Ashkenazi Jewish life and culture throughout its thousand-year history in Eastern Europe and the diaspora. The program enables participants to engage with the Jewish Ashkenazi experience through history, culture, politics, and art, with courses not typically found outside of the university setting.

A keynote event “Legitimizing Genocide: Science, Scholarship and the Complicity of the Academy” featuring Alan Steinweis (University of Vermont) in discussion with Jonathan Brent (YIVO Executive Director and CEO) will take on Zoom at 2:00pm ET on Wednesday, January 11, 2023. This event will be open to the public including those not enrolled in the Winter Program.

This year’s Winter Program will feature courses taught by Jonathan Brent, Maya Benton, Maya Balakirsky Katz (Bar-Ilan University), Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland), Elżbieta Janicka (Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Dovid Katz, Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Anita Norich (University of Michigan), Ilan Stavans (Amherst College), and Marek Tuszewicki (Jagiellonian University in Kraków).

Conducted via Zoom once again this year, the 2023 Winter Program features small class sizes, allowing students to work closely with instructors from the comfort of home.

“Offering the Winter Program online makes it accessible to learners across the globe,” said Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s Director of Education. “I’m delighted the program continues to provide a space to think critically about history and the social and geo-political challenges we face today.”

Concurrent with the Winter Program, YIVO will also run a series of Winter Yiddish seminars this January. These seminars, taught by Eve Jochnowitz (University of Michigan), Josh Price (Yale University), Vera Szabó (Beth Shalom Aleichem), and Perl Teitelbaum, will cover topics such as Yiddish literature, children’s music, and Ashkenazi Jewish cooking.

Learn more about the Winter Program and related events at yivo.org/Winter-Program. To learn more about YIVO’s Winter Yiddish courses, visit yivo.org/Winter-Yiddish.

Be sure to sign up for our free Shine Online Educational Series courses, join us at our public programs, taking place in person and online, and explore our free online resources, such as the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections, and the YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum.

For any media inquiries please contact:
Ben Kaplan
Director of Education

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story