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Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, is an ecstatic, erotic book, found in the Hebrew Bible. It has been a source of inspiration for many composers throughout history from the Yiddish theater to the Society for Jewish Folk Music, and beyond.

and all the days were purple, a new album by composer Alex Weiser, features songs which set Yiddish and English poems to music that search for the divine while reflecting on the longing, beauty, and tumult of life.

YIVO was founded as the Yiddish Scientific Institute (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut) in 1925 by scholars in Berlin and Vilna. 

The immigration quotas of 1921 and 1924 virtually shut down Jewish immigration to the United States. This exhibit provides a selection of Yiddish cartoonists’ furious responses. (2019)

Black Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutzkever (2018) recounts the story of one of the greatest Yiddish poets who became a symbol of national resistance and creative survival. This film screening will be followed by a discussion with Yiddish literature scholar Ruth Wisse.

For decades, scholarship on the Holocaust in Kovno has been dominated by the writings of ghetto elites, relegating the testimonies of Jews who did not occupy positions of authority during the war to the margins. This talk will highlight Yiddish and Hebrew accounts of the Kovno ghetto whose evidentiary value has been minimized or ignored.

The new album from Cantaloupe Music, created by YIVO’s Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser, is comprised of contemporary classical songs that set Yiddish and English poems to music.

Join Anita Norich in conversation with Joseph Berger about Jewish refugees in America, female authors, Yiddish novels, translation and more to celebrate the launch of Professor Norich’s translation of Kadya Molodovsky’s novel.

This talk will examine how Jewish folklore, and Ashkenazic (Yiddish) Jewish folklore in particular is different from other folklores around the world, while at the same time, discussing how it shares many of the same characteristics.

Almost precisely 100 years ago, the company that would form the basis for the future Moscow Yiddish Art Theater performed the only play ever written by Shloyme Mikhoels, its star actor, future director, and head of the wartime Jewish Antifascist Committee. Now, for the first time in a hundred years, Mikhoels’ play will be performed in a dramatic reading.