exhibit opening
The Vienna Model of Radicalization - In-person Program
On March 12, 2025 at 6:30 PM, LBI will open the exhibit The Vienna Model of Radicalization. This new exhibition, on show for the first time in the United States, explores the significance of the Holocaust in Austria and highlights the role of Vienna as gateway for the radicalization of antisemitic policy in the Nazi State. The opening will take place on the anniversary of the Anschluss, the date of the German annexation of Austria in 1938.
The opening will include a talk by Michaela Raggam-Blesch and a Q&A with a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, George Langnas. Attendees will then have the opportunity to view the exhibition.
This event will be held in person at the Center for Jewish History. If you are not able to attend, the talk will be recorded and posted on YouTube.
Speaker
Michaela Raggam-Blesch is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna with the research project “Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency: Survival Strategies of Intermarried Families in Nazi- Dominated Europe” funded by the Austrian Science Fund. She recently submitted her habilitation on “mixed families” during the Nazi period in Vienna.
Dr. Raggam-Blesch has received various fellowships and was awarded the Leon Zelman Award for Dialogue and Understanding in 2022. She was the curator of several exhibitions on the Holocaust – most recently, the exhibit “The Vienna Model of Radicalization: Austria and the Shoah.”
Dr. Raggam-Blesch has focused extensively on the Holocaust in Austria. She co- authored Topographie der Shoah: Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien (Vienna 2015) and co-edited Letzte Orte: Die Wiener Sammellager und die Deportationen 1941/42 (Vienna 2021), both of which are now in their second editions.
Ticket Info: Free; registration required
Presented by:
exhibit opening
conversation
At Lunch with Sam Roberts – Live on Zoom
Julie Salamon (New York Times best-selling author) sits down with journalist and author Sam Roberts. Sam Roberts covered urban affairs in New York as a reporter, columnist, domestic correspondent and editor for The New York Times and The New York Daily News for more than 50 years. Currently he works as an obituaries writer for The New York Times, and is the founding host of “The New York Times Close Up,” which first appeared in 1992 on NY1 News and is now available on CUNY-TV. Sam is also the author of a dozen nonfiction books, including The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World’s Greatest City; A History of New York in 101 Objects; and The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Atom Spy Case. He was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Cornell University.
Ticket Info: Free; register online for a Zoom link
Presented by:
conversation
concert
Searching for the Light: Songs of Love, Justice and Peace – In-person Program
Join the American Society for Jewish Music and YIVO for a free concert of Jewish choral masterpieces, featuring the magnificent voices of students from the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music and the Jewish Theological Seminary’s H. L. Miller Cantorial School. Joyce Rosenzweig and Cantor Natasha J. Hirschhorn will serve as conductors, with Pedro d’Aquino accompanying the choir on the piano.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
concert
lecture
DNA of the Ottoman Empire: Crossroads of the Jewish People - In-person Program and Live on Zoom
The Avotaynu DNA Project aims to explore the genetic connections among Jewish communities worldwide, particularly focusing on those that found refuge in the Ottoman Empire during various historical periods. This project highlights the genetic diversity and shared heritage among Jews from different regions, as well as the impact of migration and historical events on their DNA. By analyzing DNA samples from various Jewish populations, Adam Brown and Michael Waas intend to showcase how the genetic markers reveal common ancestry and connections that trace back to the Ottoman Empire, where many Jewish communities flourished. The findings may illuminate the historical movements of Jewish populations, their integration into diverse cultures, and their resilience through centuries of change.
This research not only contributes to the understanding of Jewish genealogy but also provides insights into the broader narrative of the Jewish diaspora, reinforcing the idea that despite geographical and cultural differences, there exists a profound genetic link among Jews worldwide. The emphasis on the Ottoman Empire as a refuge underscores the historical significance of this region in shaping Jewish identity and continuity.
Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor.
Speakers
Adam Brown was the National Co-Chair of 2017 annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) in Orlando and is the President of the non-profit Avotaynu Foundation. He is the Project Administrator of the Avotaynu DNA Project, a multi-disciplinary worldwide collaboration to utilize DNA to illuminate known events in Jewish history from the consolidation of the Israelite tribes 3,200 years ago to the present. Adam has been an avid genealogist for more than three decades and has spoken at dozens of conference venues on the subject of Jewish genealogy and history, including 18 Zoom lectures delivered to Jewish Genealogical Societies across the country during the COVID epidemic.
Michael Waas is a professional genealogist and historian, specializing in Sephardic Jewry, with his firm, Hollander-Waas Jewish Heritage Services. He received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology with a specialization in Historical Archaeology from New College of Florida and his master’s degree from the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. The subject of his M.A. thesis was “Istorya i oy: A comparative study on the Development of Jewish Heritage of the former Ottoman Empire.” For the year 2017-2018 he received the Gaon Prize for Outstanding M.A. Thesis research of the Moshe David Gaon Center for Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) Culture, as well as the Prize for Research into the Heritage of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry, awarded by the Ben Zvi Institute and the Israeli Ministry of Education. Michael is co-administrator of the AvotaynuDNA Project and, since 2023, he has been Associate Director of the Sephardic Researcher Division of JewishGen. In September 2023 he received a 12-month appointment as Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society to survey its archive and collection for Jewish-related materials.
Ticket Info:
In person: $5 general admission; free for JGSNY and CJH members; click here to register
Zoom: Pay what you wish; click here to register
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai – In-person Event and Live on YouTube
Join us in person and online for a book talk on The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with co-author Melissa R. Klapper and moderator Zev Eleff. The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai was edited by Dianne Ashton z”l and Melissa R. Klapper and is available from NYU Press.
Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were immigrants. She affirmed and maintained her dedication to Jewish religious practice and Jewish faith while many family members embraced Christianity. Yet she also lived well within the social parameters established for Southern white women, espoused Southern values, and owned enslaved African Americans.
The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai is one of the few surviving Civil War diaries by a Jewish woman in the antebellum South. It charts her daily life and her evolving perspective on Confederate nationalism and Southern identity, Jewishness, women’s roles in wartime, gendered domestic roles in slave-owning households, and the centrality of family relationships. While never losing sight of the racist social and political structures that shaped Emma Mordecai’s world, the book chronicles her experiences with dislocation and the loss of her home.
Bringing to life the hospital visits, food shortages, local sociability, Jewish observances, sounds and sights of nearby battles, and the very personal ramifications of emancipation and its aftermath for her household and family, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai offers a valuable and distinct look at a unique historical figure from the waning years of the Civil War South.
Ticket Info: General Admission $10, Students $5
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
A Trip into the Archive: The Case of Otto Schneid – Live on Zoom
YIVO’s Museum of Jewish Art, Judaica, and Art History was initiated in the mid-1930s at YIVO’s Vilna headquarters. Those involved included the well-known artist Marc Chagall and the Austrian-Jewish art historian Otto Schneid. Before Schneid was tapped to spearhead this museum, he had dedicated years of his life to creating a kind of encyclopedia of contemporary Jewish artists, many of them contributors to L’Ecole de Paris and satellites of this avant-garde art movement in cities across Europe. Beginning in 1929, Schneid travelled to view the artwork of over one hundred a hundred Jewish artists such as Chana Orloff, Alfred Reth, Oscar Miestchaninoff, and Henryk Streng. He also corresponded with them by letter, and the artists sent him photographs of their work along with their biographies. Schneid submitted the manuscript of his encyclopedia to his publisher in 1937. Following the Anschluss of March 1938, the Nazis raided the publishing house and destroyed the manuscript. Schneid escaped Europe with the letters and photographs he had gathered with the hope of recreating the book.
Based on her archival work at YIVO and at the University of Toronto’s Fisher Library, Alyssa Quint discusses the lives of Schneid and his artists and uses the case of Schneid to reflect on the allure of and impediments to archival research.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
lecture
performance
The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds – In-person Event
Through his haunting and evocative score, Ofer Ben-Amots offers an operatic retelling of Sh. An-ski’s masterpiece of the Yiddish theatrical canon. Wracked with grief for her beloved, Leah, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, recounts her love of a young scholar who died on learning of her betrothal to another man. On the day of the wedding, she becomes possessed by an evil spirit, known in Jewish folklore as a dybbuk. In order to exorcize the spirit and save Leah’s soul, the village must learn the spirit’s true origin.
Directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, conducted by Robert Kahn and performed by students from Mannes and the College of Performing Arts, this production of the The Dybbuk is certain to excite your spirits!
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: $18; ASJM, YIVO, & LBI members: $12; Seniors & students: $9
Presented by:
performance
performance
The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds – In-person Event
Through his haunting and evocative score, Ofer Ben-Amots offers an operatic retelling of Sh. An-ski’s masterpiece of the Yiddish theatrical canon. Wracked with grief for her beloved, Leah, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, recounts her love of a young scholar who died on learning of her betrothal to another man. On the day of the wedding, she becomes possessed by an evil spirit, known in Jewish folklore as a dybbuk. In order to exorcize the spirit and save Leah’s soul, the village must learn the spirit’s true origin.
Directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, conducted by Robert Kahn and performed by students from Mannes and the College of Performing Arts, this production of the The Dybbuk is certain to excite your spirits!
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: $18; ASJM, YIVO, & LBI members: $12; Seniors & students: $9
Presented by:
performance
panel discussion
Yiddish Studies in the Digital Age: 10 Years of In geveb – In-person Event and Live on Zoom
In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies published its first articles, essays, translations, and teacher resources in August of 2015. In the intervening decade, it has to a large degree achieved its founding goal, to become “a central address for the study of all things Yiddish.” A generation of students, culture producers, and emerging scholars of Yiddish have now come of age with In geveb as a place to publish, to keep abreast of current research around the world, to find new translations to teach, and read reviews of everything from the latest scholarly publications to new Yiddish music, theater, and film. This roundtable brings together a group of scholars who have all been involved with In geveb in a range of roles to reflect on what this “born digital” journal has contributed to the field of Yiddish studies. This panel will also reflect on the state of Yiddish studies more broadly over the past decade. The panel will conclude by asking what the next 10 years will hold for the field of Yiddish studies, and how scholarly and cultural spaces like In geveb will need to adapt to be ready to serve a changing academic and cultural landscape.
Panelists include former Peer Review Associate for In geveb Elena Hoffenberg, founding co-editor of In geveb and past president of In geveb’s board of directors Eitan Kensky, and members of In geveb’s board of directors Eddy Portnoy and Rachel Rubinstein. The evening will be introduced and moderated by chief editor of In geveb Jessica Kirzane and president of In geveb’s board of directors Madeleine Cohen.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
panel discussion
conversation
Survivor Leo Ullman in Conversation with Kyra Schuster - In-Person Program
Leo Ullman survived the Holocaust in hiding with strangers as a toddler—in Amsterdam, the same city where Anne Frank and her family hid and were later discovered. His parents, who also went into hiding in a separate location, were told nothing about his caretakers or his location in order to help keep him safe. Only after the war did Leo realize that the loving couple who had raised him for years were not his biological parents. He later learned just how many of the Dutch families nearby knew about the young Jewish boy in hiding and chose to protect him.
Ullman came to the United States in 1947, served in the U.S. Marine Corps, and practiced law for more than 30 years. He also served as a Director of the Anne Frank Center USA for two decades and as its Chairman for 7 years.
At this program, Leo Ullman will share his memories, in conversation with Kyra Schuster, Lead Acquisitions Curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. On the Museum's staff since 1994, Schuster acquires new materials for the Museum's permanent collection and has worked on numerous special exhibitions, Museum publications, and online programs. This program is suitable for families with children ages 11 and above.
A tour of Anne Frank The Exhibition is available following the program. When you register for the program, a ticket link will be included in your confirmation email. Tickets to the exhibition are $25 for youth under 17 and $30 for adults. Attendance at the 6:00 pm program is required to purchase tickets to the exhibition.
Part of the Center’s programming series Anne Frank in History and Memory in connection with Anne Frank The Exhibition.
Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; click here to register
Please note that tickets to programs do not include the Anne Frank The Exhibit.
CJH members enjoy 40% off on tickets. Join today.
Presented by:
conversation
book talk
Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850 – Live on Zoom
An agunah, literally a “chained woman,” is a woman unable to secure a rabbinic divorce because her husband has disappeared or is unwilling to sign the divorce papers. In The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850, Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early modern era and on the Jewish legal rulings of rabbis, which determined the fate of these marginalized agunot. How did Jewish society deal with the danger of women becoming agunot? What kind of reality was imposed on women who found themselves as agunot, and what could they do to extricate themselves from their plight? How did rabbinic decisors discharge their task during this period, and what were the outcomes given that the agunot were dependent on the male rabbinic establishment? Shashar reexamines the halakhic activity concerning agunot in the early modern period and proposes a new assessment of the attitude that decisors displayed toward the freeing of these women. This study also fills a void in the scholarship on agunot by describing the lives of these women and of the men who brought this about.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Shashar about this book, led by historian Elisheva Carlebach.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
book talk
concert
Evening of Sephardic Art Song – In-person Event & Live on Zoom
This lecture-recital aims to raise awareness about a unique and rich vocal repertoire within the Western classical medium, one that also offers a window into Sephardic culture and history. In this two-part event, Dr. Lori Sen will present an overview of the history, language, and culture of Sephardim, the development of the Sephardic art song genre, and its musical elements and stylistic features. Zoë Johnstone Stewart (guitar) and Andrew Stewart (piano) will join Lori for the recital portion and will present a variety of songs for voice and guitar, and voice and piano by Alberto Hemsi, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Lazare Saminsky, Joaquín Rodrigo, Joaquín Nin-Culmell, Manuel García Morante, Yehezkel Braun, Jose Antonio de Donostia, Daniel Akiva, Matilde Salvador, Ulrike Merk, among others.
The Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series is made possible by a generous gift from the Estate of Sidney Krum.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: $15; YIVO members & students: $10
Presented by:
concert
conversation
At Lunch with Lawrence Bacow – Live on Zoom
Julie Salamon (New York Times best-selling author) sits down with retired Harvard President Lawrence Bacow. Lawrence S. Bacow served as the 29th President of Harvard University from 2018 until 2023. Widely recognized as one of higher education’s most respected leaders, Bacow’s tenure at Harvard was marked by the creation of a range of academic initiatives, advocacy for public service and immigration, diversity and access to opportunity, and steady leadership of the university through the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2011 to 2014, he served as President- in-Residence in the Higher Education Program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. From 2014 to 2018, he served as the Hauser Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership. Prior to joining Harvard, Bacow was President of Tufts University from 2001 to 2011. During his tenure, he advanced the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and public service and fostered collaboration across the university’s eight schools. Before his time at Tufts, Bacow spent 24 years on the faculty of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professorship of Environmental Studies. Interested in math and science from an early age, Bacow attended college at MIT, where he received his S.B. in economics in three years and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to earn three degrees from Harvard: a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in public policy from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Ticket Info: Free; register online for a Zoom link
Presented by:
conversation
lecture
The YIVO Sound Archive and the Klezmer Revival – Live on Zoom
YIVO sound archivist Eléonore Biezunski will tell the story of the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings in relation to the revitalization of klezmer music since the mid-1970s. The impetus of young folk musicians seeking to reclaim the music of their ancestors, particularly the instrumental genre known as klezmer music, in a general context of “roots movement,” was a major factor in the establishment of the YIVO Sound Archive in the early 1980s. As a sound archivist and Yiddish musician, Biezunski presents the archive not only as a repository of documents, possible sources, but also as a living space – a historical phenomenon in its own right and a dynamic spatialized territory generated by individuals with their own creativity, caught in a web of social and cultural, intellectual and scientific, institutional and artistic contexts.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
lecture
lecture
Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky – In-person Event & Live on Zoom
What role should Jews play in revolutionary movements? Should they act collectively on their own behalf or as indistinct individuals within majority populations in the interest of universalistic ideals? Or was this a false dichotomy? These questions have defined the basis of left-wing Jewish politics since the 19th century.
In this lecture, Tony Michels will discuss two different approaches to revolutionary Jewish politics, as defined by Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky. Both were Russian-born Jews who played seminal roles in the Russian revolutionary movement. Both also came to be seen as embodiments of the modern Jewish experience. However, they gave radically different answers to the predicament of modern Jewry.
This evening’s program is the first in a series of programs held in conjunction with YIVO’s current digitization of the Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA). Consisting of nearly 200 collections encompassing 3.5 million pages of archival documents that were collected by the Bund Archives, the JLPA forms the world’s most comprehensive body of material pertaining to Jewish political activity in Europe and the United States.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
Warsaw Testament by Rokhl Auerbach – In-person Event & Live on Zoom
Born in Lanowitz, a small village in rural Podolia, Rokhl Auerbach was a journalist, literary critic, memoirist, and a member of the Warsaw Yiddish literary community before the Holocaust. Upon the German invasion and occupation of Poland in 1939, she was tasked by historian and social activist Emanuel Ringelblum to run a soup kitchen for the starving inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto and later to join his top-secret ghetto archive, the Oyneg Shabes. One of only three surviving members of the archive project, Auerbach’s wartime and postwar writings became a crucial source of information for historians of both prewar Jewish Warsaw and the Warsaw Ghetto. After immigrating to Israel in 1950, she founded the witness testimony division at Yad Vashem and played a key role in the development of Holocaust remembrance.
Join us for a lecture by historian Samuel Kassow about Auerbach’s memoir, Warsaw Testament, which paints a vivid portrait of the city’s prewar Yiddish literary and artistic community and of its destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
Buy Warsaw Testament, translated by Samuel Kassow.
Buy Who Will Write Our History?: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
book talk
concert
Falafel, Freilach and Frijoles: From Mambo to Borscht - In-person Event and Live on Zoom
Arturo O’Farrill, and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, perform a concert that explores the relationship between the Latino and Jewish communities. The evening will feature Jewish and Yiddish classics in Afro Latin big band versions, and Latin classics in Klezmer arrangements. The Orchestra will feature performances by special guests including trumpeter/slide trumpeter, composer Steven Bernstein.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info:
In Person: $25; Members (YIVO, Belongó, ASJM, Borscht Belt Museum, LBI): $15; Students: $15
Zoom Livestream: $10
Presented by:
concert
discussion
Person Place Thing with Jonathan Brent – In-person Event & Live on Zoom
Join YIVO for a recording of the public radio show, Person Place Thing, with YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent. Hosted by humorist Randy Cohen, Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing with particular meaning to them.
The conversation will consist of Brent and Cohen discussing three different objects from the YIVO Archives and Library. YIVO’s collections contain 24 million items and 400,000 books, offering insight into centuries of Jewish history. Brent and Cohen will cover topics such as the Holocaust, American antisemitism during the interwar period, and more. Jardena Gertler-Jaffe and Bethany Pietroniro will play selections of music found in YIVO’s collections throughout the event.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: $15; YIVO members & students: $10
Presented by:
discussion
lecture
The Making of a Historian of East European Jewry and the Holocaust: Lucy S. Dawidowicz and the YIVO in Vilna, New York, and Offenbach – Live on Zoom
This talk by Nancy Sinkoff will explore the influence of the YIVO on Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915-1990), a postwar American Jewish public intellectual and historian, who was central to the field that is now called “Holocaust Studies.” Witness to the vital Jewish world of pre-war Vilna, shaped by the group of refugee and survivor historians at the New York YIVO during the war, and an activist working with Jewish DPs and salvaging Jewish cultural treasures in Germany after the war, Dawidowicz played a principal role in the construction of postwar American Holocaust consciousness. With The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (1967) and The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945 (1975), a classic of “intentionalist” Holocaust historiography that emphasized the centrality of Hitler’s antisemitic ideology to the Nazis’ “Final Solution,” Dawidowicz became a central authority on East European Jewry, the Holocaust, and antisemitism in the postwar years.
Buy Nancy Sinkoff’s book about Lucy S. Dawidowicz.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
The New Jewish School in Music (1908-1938) as Part of the Jewish Cultural Renaissance – Live on Zoom
The history of the “New Jewish School of Music” began when several music students from the St. Petersburg Conservatory founded the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg in 1908. The end of this movement came with the 1938 invasion of Austria by Germany and the dissolution of the Viennese Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music that same year. The fascinating and dramatic history of the New Jewish School is the subject of From St. Petersburg to Vienna: The New Jewish School in Music (1908-1938) As Part of the Jewish Cultural Renaissance by Jascha Nemtsov. While many other national "schools" of music—such as the Russian, Czech, and Hungarian—were able to develop freely and establish themselves in an environment of cultural transparency, the Jewish school was violently suppressed. From St. Petersburg to Vienna was first published in 2004 in German, focusing on the reconstruction of the Jewish school’s historical development in Russia and, after 1917, increasingly in other Eastern and Central European countries.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Nemtsov about this recently-revised and translated edition of the book, led by YIVO Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
book talk
panel discussion
New Trends in YIVO Scholarship – Live on Zoom
Since 1925, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has been a pioneer in the field of Jewish studies. At the core of YIVO since its founding was its commitment to scholarship which supported the Jewish “folk.” This manifested in a variety of initiatives, including youth autobiography contests and a youth research division (yugfor), an Economic-Statistical section (ekstat), and the establishment of various YIVO branches. These YIVO's activities continue to pique the interests of scholars, who have recently produced new scholarship analyzing these initiatives through the lens of new pioneering research methods.
Join YIVO for a panel discussion sharing new research on these historic YIVO initiatives featuring presentations by William Pimlott, Kamil Kijek, and Nicolas Vallois, followed by a conversation led by Jessica Kirzane.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
panel discussion
conference
YIVO in America – In-person Event and Live on Zoom
Join us for a celebration of YIVO’s 100th anniversary with a conference focusing on how YIVO’s founding vision for Jewish social sciences has been realized in America since its headquarters shifted to New York City in 1940.
The destruction of East European Jewry during the Holocaust—including YIVO’s original headquarters in Vilna—challenged fundamental ideas about Jewish peoplehood and the Yiddish language’s role in it that had animated YIVO since its founding. Despite this, YIVO continued to publish scholarly works in America, support the study of Yiddish linguistics and folklore, and serve as a repository documenting East European Jewish history and culture. YIVO also developed new ventures, helping to create the field of Holocaust studies, playing a pioneering role in the teaching of Yiddish as it ceased being the mother tongue of the Jewish masses, and bolstering the development of Jewish studies more broadly.
In this conference, scholars will discuss YIVO’s work since 1940 touching on how YIVO’s purpose shifted in the American context, major achievements of YIVO’s work in America, YIVO’s role in the post-war evolution of Yiddish and Jewish studies, and what work lies ahead for YIVO and Jewish studies more broadly.
Scholars featured in this conference include Jonathan Brent, Leyzer Burko, Deborah Dash Moore, Hasia Diner, Eric Goldstein, Itzik Gottesman, Stefanie Halpern, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Cecile Kuznitz, Rebecca Margolis, Anita Norich, Samuel Norich, Naomi Seidman, Mark Smith, Kalman Weiser, and Steve Zipperstein.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
conference
conference
YIVO in America – In-person Event and Live on Zoom
Join us for a celebration of YIVO’s 100th anniversary with a conference focusing on how YIVO’s founding vision for Jewish social sciences has been realized in America since its headquarters shifted to New York City in 1940.
The destruction of East European Jewry during the Holocaust—including YIVO’s original headquarters in Vilna—challenged fundamental ideas about Jewish peoplehood and the Yiddish language’s role in it that had animated YIVO since its founding. Despite this, YIVO continued to publish scholarly works in America, support the study of Yiddish linguistics and folklore, and serve as a repository documenting East European Jewish history and culture. YIVO also developed new ventures, helping to create the field of Holocaust studies, playing a pioneering role in the teaching of Yiddish as it ceased being the mother tongue of the Jewish masses, and bolstering the development of Jewish studies more broadly.
In this conference, scholars will discuss YIVO’s work since 1940 touching on how YIVO’s purpose shifted in the American context, major achievements of YIVO’s work in America, YIVO’s role in the post-war evolution of Yiddish and Jewish studies, and what work lies ahead for YIVO and Jewish studies more broadly.
Scholars featured in this conference include Jonathan Brent, Leyzer Burko, Deborah Dash Moore, Hasia Diner, Eric Goldstein, Itzik Gottesman, Stefanie Halpern, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Cecile Kuznitz, Rebecca Margolis, Anita Norich, Samuel Norich, Naomi Seidman, Mark Smith, Kalman Weiser, and Steve Zipperstein.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
conference