The 2026 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization Features Leading Jewish History Scholars

(New York, NY) – The 2026 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization will take place online via Zoom from January 6-23, 2026. The Program delves into the literature, history, and culture of East European Jewry and features a remarkable lineup of international and national presenters including scholar and translator Anita Norich, historian Samuel Kassow, film critic J. Hoberman, and photography curator Maya Benton, along with instructors from leading institutions across the world.

Now in its fifteenth year, the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization offers participants an in-depth exploration of the thousand-year history of Ashkenazi Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe and beyond. Through courses rarely available outside university settings, students engage with the Jewish Ashkenazi experience across history, culture, politics, and the arts.

A keynote event “The Fall of the Weimar Republic” will be delivered by historian Sir Richard J. Evans at 1:00pm ET on Monday, January 12, 2026, via Zoom. Sir Evans will explore the many factors that contributed to the fall of the Weimar Republic and what he believes precipitated its ultimate collapse. This event will be free and open to the public, including those not enrolled in the Winter Program.

This year’s faculty also includes Jonathan Brent (YIVO’s Executive Director & CEO), Elżbieta Janicka (Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Harvey Klehr (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emeritus, at Emory University), Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Ilan Stavans (Amherst College).

Conducted via Zoom, the 2026 Winter Program features small class sizes, allowing students to work closely with instructors from the comfort of home.

Concurrent with the Winter Program, YIVO will also run a series of Winter Yiddish seminars this January. These seminars, taught by Shane Baker (Congress for Jewish Culture), Dovid Braun (YIVO’s Academic Advisor in Yiddish Language, Pedagogy, and Linguistics and Academic Director, YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program), Adi Mahalel (author of The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism), Eugene Orenstein (McGill University), Josh Price (Yale University), Boris Sandler, Paula Teitelbaum, and Mikhl Yashinsky, will cover topics such as Yiddish literature, Yiddish theater, Jewish history, and more.

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.

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 Eastern European Jewry worldwide. For 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 global outreach and enable us to share our vast resources. The YIVO Archives contains more than 24 million original items, and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for such study in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story