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This evening will feature a raucous singalong of our favorite Jewishly-inflected holiday songs, and special guest Jody Rosen, author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, who will discuss the unique phenomenon that is Jewish contributions to Christmas music. Afterwards we’ll celebrate with a free reception with Chinese food. 

Selections from The Polish Jewish Observer, providing insight into the lives of Polish and other European Jews during World War II.

Scholars Jan Grabowksi and Barbara Engelking were found guilty in Poland for their book documenting the range of Polish behavior towards Jews during the Holocaust. Prof. Grabowski, in conversation with journalist Masha Gessen, will discuss his response to the recent verdict as well as its political and scholarly implications.

Join us in commemorating 700 years of the founding of Vilnius, featuring a presentation by Laimonas Briedis, and a discussion moderated by Jonathan Brent with Briedis, Laima Laučkaitė, Irena Grudzińska Gross, and David Roskies.

On Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 3:00pm, YIVO will present Open Secret: The Jewish Sound in Soviet Music, as part of its ongoing Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series.

Before World War II, the Soviet Union was the only country in the world to officially promote Jewish music. After World War II, Soviet authorities declared that Jewish music did not exist. Yet all along, major Soviet composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Miecyzslaw Weinberg, and Mikhail Gnesin found deep inspiration in the sounds of Ashkenazi Jewish folk music. How did these composers manage to weave Jewish themes into some of the most stirring music of postwar Soviet society? How did they personally navigate the ongoing strictures of artistic censorship and the periodic cycles of antisemitic repression?

In this YIVO event, Professor James Loeffler, Yuval Waldman and the young artists of the Krum Concert Series will explore these questions through a unique pairing of music and words. In a blended lecture-concert, they will present several works including Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, Mikhail Gnesin's Piano Trio in Memory of Our Perished Children, and Miecyzslaw Weinberg's Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes for violin and piano.

Attend the event. 

James Loeffler is an Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia. He also serves as Scholar-in-Residence at the Pro Musica Hebraica Foundation and as Academic Vice Co-Chair of the Jewish Music Forum of the American Society for Jewish Music. His first book, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire was published by Yale University Press in 2010. It received awards from the Association for Jewish Studies, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP). In 2013-2014, he is Dean's Visiting Scholar on the Andrew Mellon Foundation New Foundations Fellowship at the Georgetown University Law Center. There he is working on a book about Jews, Israel, and international human rights.

Born in Russia and educated in Israel, the United States and Europe, Yuval Waldman has enjoyed great success as a violinist, conductor, and educator. Waldman has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel and given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London, and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In 2005, Maestro Waldman founded Music Bridges International, to foster cross-cultural music exchange programs that feature the music of different countries. Under the Music Bridges banner, he organized the successful Young Artsist Strings Competition at the “Tchaikovsky’s Homeland” Center in Izhevsk/Votkinsk, Russia.

James Loeffler is interviewed here by Yedies editor, Roberta Newman.

(NEW YORK, November 4, 2013) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announces with sadness the death of its longtime music archivist, Chana Mlotek, known worldwide for her expertise on the musical traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe. Senior Archivist Fruma Mohrer comments, “Chana had every single piece of music from the ...

During World War II, Stalin’s ideologists decided to form a new organization called the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC), which became a structural unit of the Soviet Information Bureau, or Sovinformburo.

For this program YIVO joins forces with the young, “intrepid” (New Yorker) vocal and instrumental chamber ensemble Cantata Profana to present Gustav Mahler’s epic song symphony, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) in Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn’s chamber orchestra arrangement.

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Sholem Aleichem's Moshkeleh Ganev was unique for its focus on the underclass and portrayal of Jews interacting with non-Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Now, lauded Sholem Aleichem translator Curt Leviant has brought the text into the light with its first English translation. Leviant and Dvora Reich discuss Sholem Aleichem and this newly re-discovered novel.