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by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The new Hollywood movie The Monuments Men has been drawing renewed attention to the postwar rescue by the Allies of art and other cultural treasures looted by the Nazis.

YIVO’s history is inextricably tied to the work of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program, established by the Allied armies in 1943 to protect important heritage sites on the battlefront. As the war drew to a close, its mission expanded to include the rescue of artworks and other cultural artifacts that had been stolen from the Nazis.

Eddy Portnoy tells the story of how the MFAA saved the remnants of YIVO’s prewar collections in this week’s Forward. Read “How Real 'Monuments Men' Saved Priceless YIVO Yiddish Treasure.”

In this episode, believed to have been broadcast on October 25, 1964, host Sheftl Zak interviews Yudel Mark, editor of the journal Yidishe Shprakh and co-editor of the Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, about his work on the Great Dictionary and YIVO's involvement with the project. (Yudel Mark's papers ...

Spring Yiddish classes are here! Brush up on your grammar, tackle the Yiddish writers of the first world war, or read the Forverts.

Register for a course.

Have questions? Contact Jennifer Young or Leah Falk (lfalk@yivo.cjh.org).

by SARAH PONICHTERA As is appropriate for this time of year, we’ll begin with a look back and end with a gaze ahead. The annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies met in Boston in mid-December, featuring several panels on Yiddish topics, including Yiddish in the twentieth century, and new ...

One hundred years ago there appeared a revolutionary, scholarly journal – complete with footnotes, bibliographies, and a page of errata at the end.

Rising Yiddish musician Benjy Fox-Rosen releases Two Worlds/Tsvey Veltn (Golden Horn Records), a stunning new song cycle based on the poetry of master Yiddish and Polish writer Mordechai Gebirtig (1877-1942) at a ticketed concert on January 15, 2014, at 7pm at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (15 West 16th ...

Two of the over 300 Wexler Oral History videos recorded at the Yiddish Book Center over the past few years document the lives of people we have recently commemorated in Yedies. Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (1920-2013) Chana Mlotek (1922-2013) Two interviews also explore the history of YIVO: Professor Cecile Kuznitz, author of a forthcoming book on ...

On Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:00 pm, YIVO will celebrate the work of the most popular composers from the golden age of Yiddish American theater, otherwise known as the “big four of Second Avenue”: Abraham Ellstein, Alexander Olshanetsky, Sholom Secunda, and Joseph Rumshinsky. This concert features the composers’ hits ...

by SARAH PONICHTERA New York will play host to a brilliant array of Yiddish events this winter, with offerings in music, theater, art, and education. With the recent loss of Chana Mlotek, z”l, music is very much on our minds here at di Nyu-yorkerin, and there is no lack of opportunities to ...

On Monday, October 21, 2013, YIVO and the Center for Jewish History will host Sex, Yiddish and the Law: Jewish Life in Metz in the 18th Century, in conjunction with an exhibition, a conference and two other public programs celebrating the pinkas (register) of the bet din (rabbinic court) of the Jewish community of Metz, France, two leather-bound volumes preserved in the YIVO Archives. Brimming with details of commercial transactions involving Jews and non-Jews, family law, inheritance, modes of jurisprudence, and recourse to civil courts, the pinkas is a monument to an extraordinary community and its remarkable rabbinical court.

Visit the exhibition and symposium website and buy tickets to the events.

Professor Jay Berkovitz of the University of Massachusetts is the author of the upcoming book, Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court 1771-1789 (Brill), a transcription and annotations of the 400,000-word document.

On September 9, he sat down with Yedies Editor Roberta Newman to talk about the pinkas. This interview is the second in a three-part series.