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Assemble the letterheads of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals in Europe, North and South America, and Palestine from the 1890s to the eve of World War II in 1939 and you have a portrait of the Jewish world: transnational; diverse in language, political, and religious orientation; and flourishing. Di gantse velt ...

On January 21, 2015, YIVO and the Museum of the City of New York presented “Behind the Lens: New York Jews Between the Wars,” a public program in conjunction with Letters to Afar (October 22, 2014-March 31, 2015), an immersive video art installation at the Museum first premiered by YIVO at POLIN - Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw in 2013.

The four scholars on the panel used rarely seen primary source materials to explore the back-story to Letters to Afar, which features home movies of Poland in the 1920s-1930s made, for the most part, by Jews from America on trips back to their home towns.

From January 5-January 23, 2015, a diverse range of students flocked to YIVO to take advantage of a rare opportunity to study the culture, history, language, and literature of East European Jews with some of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish Studies. The courses in the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization (inaugurated in 2011) offer something different than the usual survey course in a university or adult education program: a chance to explore in detail fascinating aspects of this world.

Highlights of the program included:

YIVO mourns the passing of Joshua Fishman, who died on March 1, 2015 at age 88.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN On February 17, 2015, about 60 dedicated YIVO members and others braved a cold and snowy evening to attend “Planning for the Jewish Future: Standards for Yiddish in the 20th and 21stCenturies,” a lecture by YIVO’s new Atran Visiting Professor of Yiddish Language and Linguistics, Rakhmiel Peltz (Drexel ...

Assemble the letterheads of Jewish organizations, institutions, and individuals in Europe, North and South America, and Palestine from the 1890s to the eve of World War II in 1939 and you have a portrait of the Jewish world: transnational; diverse in language, political, and religious orientation; and flourishing. Di gantse velt ...

YIVO is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2015-2016 Max Weinreich Center Research Fellowships.

With a large number of highly qualified applicants from a diverse number of countries and disciplines, the selection committee tackled the daunting task of choosing just one fellow for each category. We thank all who applied, and encourage those who did not receive an award this year to re-apply in following years.

Projects that received awards this year will entail investigation of YIVO’s rich archival and bibliographic resources in the areas of children’s literature, literary correspondence, survivor testimony, records of philanthropic activity and pogroms, and Yiddish dance, theater, and performance archives.

The projects of the 2015-2016 cohort of fellows embody YIVO’s commitment to the highest levels of scholarship and inquiry, and we look forward to seeing the results. Stay tuned for upcoming programs and public lectures featuring our fellows!

Letters to Afar

YIVO’s and Polin’s video installation at the Museum of the City of New York, Letters to Afar, closed on March 31 but now West Coast residents have a chance to see the exhibition: it opened on February 26 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, where it will run through May 24.

Thoughtful reviews of Letters to Afar on the West Coast include Tom Teichholz’s article, “From Here to ‘Afar’: The Art of Peter Forgacs” in The Huffington Post (also appearing in Jewish Journal), Sura Wood’s review for The Bay Area Reporter, reviews in Examiner.com, the San Francisco Examiner, and SF Weekly, and a paeon to Peter Forgacs by film scholar Bill Nichols on his blog.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN Malka Lee, ca. 1930s. (YIVO Archives) When Yvette Marrin received the poem by her mother from translator Ri Turner (an alumnus of YIVO's Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture), she was stunned. It wasn't the first time she'd been contacted by scholars about her mother, ...

In this episode of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD, YIVO Chief Archivist Ezekiel Lifshutz joins host Sheftl Zak to talk about YIVO’s collection of American Jewish autobiographies,collected during the course of a 1942essay contest on the theme “Why I left Europe and what I have accomplished in America.” Lifschutz had ...