book club
LBI Book Club: Exile Music
About the Book
As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, her mother is a well-regarded opera singer, her beloved and charismatic older brother holds the neighborhood in his thrall, and most of her eccentric and wonderful extended family live nearby. Only vaguely aware of Hitler's rise or how her Jewish heritage will define her family's identity, Orly spends her days immersed in play with her best friend and upstairs neighbor, Anneliese. Together they dream up vivid and elaborate worlds, where they can escape the growing tensions around them.
But in 1938, Orly's peaceful life is shattered when the Germans arrive. Her older brother flees Vienna first, and soon Orly, her father, and her mother procure refugee visas for La Paz, a city high up in the Bolivian Andes. Even as the number of Jewish refugees in the small community grows, her family is haunted by the music that can no longer be their livelihood, and by the family and friends they left behind. While Orly and her father find their footing in the mountains, Orly's mother grows even more distant, harboring a secret that could put their family at risk again. Years pass, the war ends, and Orly must decide: Is the love and adventure she has found in La Paz what defines home, or is the pull of her past in Europe – and the piece of her heart she left with Anneliese – too strong to ignore? (description taken from Amazon)
About the Author
Jennifer Steil is an award-winning novelist and memoirist who lives in many countries. She left the United States in 2006 to take a job as editor of a newspaper in Sana’a, Yemen, where she lived for four years. Her first book, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, was inspired by her experience in Yemen. She began writing her first novel, The Ambassador’s Wife, after she was kidnapped when pregnant with her daughter, an experience that became the first scene of the novel. She and her infant daughter were evacuated from Yemen after her husband Tim Torlot, a British diplomat, was attacked by a suicide bomber. They lived in Amman, Jordan, until his posting ended and he could join them in London. In 2012, they moved to La Paz, Bolivia. Early in her time there, Steil met Jewish Bolivians whose families had fled the Nazis in Europe during World War II. Their stories sparked her third book, the novel Exile Music.
The Ambassador’s Wife won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel Award and the 2016 Phillip McMath Post Publication Book Award. Steil’s stories and articles have appeared in the New Orleans Review, Saranac Review, World Policy Journal, The Week, Time, Life, Peauxdunque Review, The Washington Times, Vogue UK, Die Welt, New York Post, The Rumpus, and France 24.
Getting the Book
Exile Music can be found at most larger libraries. Purchase options for the book are available here.
Ticket Info: Free; register at https://www.lbi.org/events/book-club-exile-music/ for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book club
lecture
Orthodox, Female, Poet: the Litvish Life of Hadasah Hirshovitz Levin, 1912-1946
Hadasah Hirshovitz Levin was a rare example of an Orthodox Jewish poet who came of age during the interwar period, a culturally turbulent time in Lithuanian Jewish history. The political and social turmoil wrought by the First World War resulted in the geographic relocation of the storied Lithuanian yeshivas, the central cultural and theological institutions of Lithuanian and Eastern European Orthodox Jewry. Some students exited the physical and ideological parameters of the Talmudical academies while others reinforced their commitment to the institution of the yeshiva. Traditionally observant women of Jewish Lithuania also underwent a transformation during this period. These women attempted to define themselves amidst the ruptures and sought avenues of creativity and religious expression that reflected the sociocultural milieu of the yeshiva world as well as the larger Eastern European cultural landscape.
Levin exemplified this struggle, bridging the gap between the yeshiva and the modern world of Orthodox education for women. Levin’s life reflected a breadth of experience immortalized in the poetry and prose she published in the interwar period. Levin’s wartime memoir offers a powerfully lyrical account of her experiences written in situ and point to a reality in which some Orthodox women achieved proficiency in both secular and religious texts.
In this lecture, Tzipora Weinberg will examine Levin’s written legacy in the context of lesser-known efforts and publications of her colleagues, to provide a lens into the experiences of an unknown group of traditionalist women in greater Jewish Lithuania.
About the Speaker
Tzipora Weinberg is a doctoral candidate in the Skirball Center for Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on Eastern European Jewish history in the 20th century and centers around the intellectual and religious experiences of Orthodox Jewish women within the communities of Poland, Galicia, and Lithuania. She has presented her findings at Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Jewish Historical Institute, and the American Musicological Society, among other academic institutions. Her next article, “Shifting Paradigms, Pandemic Realities: the Reception of Ishay Ribo’s Music in the American Hasidic Community” is forthcoming in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion. As the 2021-2022 Max Weinreich Fellow in Baltic Jewish studies at YIVO and the 2022-2023 Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Fellow at the Center for Jewish History, she explores the educational and theological development of Orthodox women in Jewish Lithuania.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Hadasah-Hirshovitz-Levin for a Zoom link
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds is a new collection of short stories by Jewish and non-Jewish writers, including numerous award-winning authors, exploring the light and dark sides of religion and culture, examining such issues as the enduring legacy of negative stereotypes amid rising anti-Semitism, prejudice, assimilation, and questions of regional, national, and ethnic identity.
Co-editors Chantelle Aimée Osman and Kenneth Wishnia as well as contributors Dr. Maria Bivens-Smith, Robin Hemley, Rabbi Ilene Schneider, and Xu Xi will be in conversation with Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History.
Program registrants will receive a code for 20% off the cost of the book.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register at programs.cjh.org/tickets/jewish-noir-2-2022-09-07 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
book talk
Serenade: A Balanchine Story
At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, Bentley's new book Serenade: A Balanchine Story carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer’s own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia; its mystical—and literal—embodiment of the tradition of classical ballet in just thirty-three minutes. Join YIVO for a discussion of this new book featuring Bentley in conversation with YIVO's Executive Director Jonathan Brent, including a discussion of how researching this book brought Bentley to YIVO, even though Balanchine was not Jewish.
About the Author
Toni Bentley danced with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet for ten years. She is the author of five New York Times Notable Books, including Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal, Holding On to the Air (coauthored with Suzanne Farrell), and The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir. Bentley is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The Best American Essays as well as in many periodicals, including The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, The Daily Beast, Vogue, and Vanity Fair.
Ticket Info: Free; register at https://yivo.org/Balanchine for a Zoom link
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book talk
commemoration
Nusakh Vilne Memorial - Live and Livestreamed on Zoom
Join us in commemorating the Jewish community of Vilna through poetry, music, and presentation. This year, Justin Cammy will discuss the poetic legacy of Yung-vilne and Avrom Sutzkever using an archival document as his launching point. A mini concert featuring musical settings of poetry of Avrom Sutzkever will follow Cammy's presentation.
Proof of full COVID-19 vaccination with matching ID is required in order to enter the Center for Jewish History. Click here to see our Visitor Safety Requirements.
About the Speaker
Justin Cammy is professor of Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College. An alum of YIVO's Uriel Weinreich Yiddish Summer Program and a past recipient of YIVO's Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar fellowship, he also serves as on-site summer director of the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish Summer Program at Tel Aviv University. Cammy is a leading expert on the interwar Yiddish literary group Young Vilna. His translation of Abraham Sutzkever's From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg (McGill-Queen's) was a finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award.
Ticket Info: Free; register at https://yivo.org/NusakhVilne2022 for tickets or a Zoom link
Presented by:
commemoration
panel discussion
The YIVO Sound Archive at 40: a Celebration
Join us for a fascinating insider discussion of the history of the YIVO Sound Archive, important areas of its collections, projects it has facilitated, and other stories of the past 40 years. Moderated by Hankus Netsky, this event will, for the very first time, bring together the founder of YIVO's Sound Archive, Henry Sapoznik, current YIVO Sound Archivists Lorin Sklamberg and Eléonore Biezunski, and former YIVO Sound Archivist Jenny Romaine.
The YIVO Sound Archive houses over 20,000 recordings (including 78, 45, and 33rpm discs, open-reel and cassette tapes, piano rolls, and compact discs and other digital formats) as well as various artifacts related to sound recordings. It is is one of the most extensive and frequently consulted Jewish music collections in the world, embracing Yiddish and Hebrew folk, pop and theater music, Holocaust songs, liturgical, choral and instrumental compositions and, of course, klezmer music, as well as spoken word, oral histories, interviews, and radio programs. In addition to serving researchers, the Sound Archive maintains a special link to the Yiddish cultural world, and has close relationships with many musicians who utilize its resources in creating their art. It serves anyone seeking to include Yiddish music in their life or work, including teachers, journalists, camp counselors, and radio producers, among others.
About the Speakers
Henry H. Sapoznik is an award winning producer, musicologist and performer and writer in the fields of traditional and popular Yiddish and American music and culture. Sapoznik, a native Yiddish speaker and child of Holocaust survivors, is one of the founders of the klezmer revival, the founder of the YIVO sound archives and a five time Grammy nominated producer and winner of the 2002 Peabody award for his 10 part NPR series “The Yiddish Radio Project.” The collection upon which it was based contains over 10,000 unique items and is housed at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
Sapoznik’s new book, A Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York, is scheduled for a 2023 release by Excelsior Press.
Jenny Romaine is a director, designer, puppeteer, and co-founder/artistic director of the OBIE winning Great Small Works visual theater collective. She is music director of Jennifer Miller’s CIRCUS AMOK. Romaine/ Great Small Works performs, teaches, and directs in theaters, schools, parks, libraries, museums, prisons, street corners, and other public spaces, producing work on many scales, from gigantic outdoor spectacles with scores of participants, to miniature shows in living rooms. Jenny was a sound archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for 13 years and for several decades has drawn on Yiddish/Pan Jewish primary source materials to create art that has contemporary meaning. Her Great Small Works projects include Muntergang and Other Cheerful Downfalls about Yiddish puppeteers Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler, The Sukkos Mob (featured in the film Punk Jews), community Purim Shpiln with the Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee in cahoots with JFREJ, and Vu bistu geven? / Where Have You Been? a Quebec-based adventure parable that asks questions about diasporic Jewish relationships to land.
Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics, and teaches Yiddish song from São Paulo to Stockholm. His recent projects include a forthcoming recording of newly-discovered Yiddish cabaret songs from Helsinki and 150 Voices, a collaboration with Yiddish-Russian singer/pianist/composer Polina Shepherd and the members of five choirs in the UK and the United States. As YIVO’s longtime Sound Archivist, he co-curates the Ruth Rubin Legacy website and currently presents materials from the newly-digitized YIVO Yiddish Folksong Project worldwide. “One of the premier American singers in any genre.” – Robert Christgau, NPR.
Eléonore Biezunski is an award-winning Parisian singer/violinist/songwriter and scholar now living in NYC. An avid collector of Yiddish music, she has led several projects and has collaborated with a large number of well-known Jewish performers in the US and abroad. Her recordings include Yerushe (IEMJ, 2016) and Zol zayn (2014). Her composition “Tshemodan” was voted Best New Yiddish Song by São Paulo’s 2021 Bubbe Awards. As YIVO’s Sound Archivist since 2016, Eléonore has coordinated the Ruth Rubin Legacy website (ruthrubin.yivo.org). She has a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and has published several book chapters and articles on the history of Yiddish music and culture, and co-edited a reissue of the complete recordings of the French Elesdisc label, 1948-1953 (2015, IEMJ). She is also a team member of the Klezmer Institute and is a recipient of an NYSCA Folk Arts Apprenticeship. www.eleonorebiezunski.com
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/SoundArchive40 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
panel discussion
book talk
The Dancer and the Holocaust: a Biography of Pola Nirenska
In her book Tancerka i Zaglada (The Dancer and the Holocaust), Weronika Kostyrko uncovers the story of dancer Pola Nirenska (1910-1992) whose career was repeatedly interrupted by antisemitism and fascism. Born Pola Nirensztajn in Warsaw, Nirenska lived and worked in Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy and Great Britain before leaving for America. Kostyrko’s biography intertwines the story of an outstanding Jewish dancer, the history of the avant-garde in Europe and the United States, and the story of the Holocaust in Poland. Kostyrko’s book also sheds light on an unknown chapter in the biography of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish prewar establishment and wartime underground, with new revelations on Karski's attitude towards Jews.
Kostyrko retraced Nirenska’s life and legacy on the basis of interviews with the last witnesses living in the USA, with Nirenska’s relatives in Israel, as well as correspondence and archives scattered on three continents. Nirenska herself did not leave diaries, private letters, nor do we have a film record of her dance. Her name survives in The Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Award, awarded annually by YIVO.
Join YIVO for a discussion of this important new biography featuring Kostyrko in conversation with YIVO’s Executive Director Jonathan Brent.
About the Author
Weronika Kostyrko worked for 20 years for the Polish liberal daily "Gazeta Wyborcza” as parliament reporter and correspondent in Germany, among other duties. As editor-in-chief of the newspaper’s women’s supplement, "Wysokie Obcasy,” she published many life stories of outstanding Jewish female figures. From 2011 Kostyrko served for five years at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as editor-in-chief of the Culture.pl website that included many articles on Yiddish culture, bios of Jewish artists and descriptions of their selected works. She is currently working on a biography of Rosa Luxemburg.
Ticket Info: Free; register at https://yivo.org/Nirenska for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
Revenge: History and Fantasy - Live Program
From God to Quentin Tarantino: for the first time, an extraordinary exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Frankfurt, accompanied by a book and podcast, takes a look at the subject of revenge in Jewish cultural history. The show offers new perspectives ranging from biblical stories, rabbinical writings, and Jewish legends, to anti-Jewish myths and Jewish bandits. Pop cultural stories form the start of the exhibition, while its vanishing point can be found in the final testimonies of those murdered and the question of justice after the Shoah. Curator Max Czollek will present the exhibition. More about Revenge: History and Fantasy can be found here.
About the Speaker
Max Czollek lives in Berlin, where he was born in 1987. After studies of political science at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, he earned a doctorate at the TU's Center for Research on Antisemitism. Since 2009 he is member of the poetry collective G13, which published books and organized lectures. 2013–2018 he was curator of the international project “Babelsprech.International” for the connection of the young German-speaking and European poetry scene. Together with Sasha Marianna Salzmann he was initiator of “Desintegration. Ein Kongress zeitgenössischer jüdischer Positionen” (2016) and “Radikale Jüdische Kulturtage” (2017) at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Studio R. His lyric books Druckkammern (2012), Jubeljahre (2015) and Grenzwerte (2019) were published at Verlagshaus Berlin. 2018 his non-fiction book Desintegriert Euch! was published at Carl Hanser.
Ticket Info: Free; register at lbi.org/events/revenge-history-and-fantasy/.
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn – Live Event
The American Jewish Historical Society presents The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, book talk with authors, Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler.
The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, tells the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn’s domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved into the “City of Churches” during the twentieth century.
Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious “town across the river” from Manhattan, celebrated for its churches and upright suburban living. But challenges to this way of life issued from the sheer growth of the city, from new secular institutions—department stores, theaters, professional baseball—and from the licit and illicit attractions of Coney Island, all of which were at odds with post-Puritan piety and behavior.
Despite these developments, the Yankee-Protestant hegemony largely held until the massive influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the twentieth century. As The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn demonstrates, in their churches, synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $32 including copy of book; register at ajhs.org/events/book-talk-the-rise-and-fall-of-protestant-brooklyn/
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book talk
conversation
At Lunch with Ruth Messinger
Julie Salamon (Wall Street Journal and NY Times) sits down with political leader and social justice advocate Ruth W. Messinger. Ruth is the Global Ambassador for American Jewish World Service, an international human rights organization she ran from 1998-2016. Additionally, she does social justice and organizing work at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at the Meyerson JCC, and teaches Jewish women social justice entrepreneurs. Ruth is a trained social worker, and previously had a 20-year career in elected office in New York City. She serves on several boards, has 3 children, 8 grand-children and 3.5 thankgreat grandchildren.
Ticket Info: Free; register at ajhs.org/events/at-lunch-with-ruth-messinger/for a Zoom link
Presented by:
conversation
lecture
How to Do Research at YIVO: What is an Archive?
The Archives and Library at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on Eastern European Jewish civilization in the world. With some 23 million items in the YIVO Archives and nearly 400,000 volumes in all European languages in YIVO's Library, the possibilities for research are endless.
Join YIVO archivist Hallel Yadin for an overview on how to do research at YIVO. The program will cover crucial and fundamental questions including: What is an archive? How is an archive different from a library? How are archives and libraries used, and by whom? What key terminologies associated with archives and libraries are useful to know?
Yadin will also cover the basics of how to search for material at YIVO. This event is open to anyone interested in doing research (online or in-person) at YIVO or learning more about YIVO’s vast collections.
Other programs in this series:
How To Do Research at YIVO: A Practical Introduction
How To Do Research at YIVO: Accessing Digitized Materials
About the Speaker
Hallel Yadin is an Archivist at YIVO. Before coming to YIVO full-time, she interned in the YIVO Archives and worked as a research assistant at Rutgers University Special Collections/University Archives. She is completing an M.L.I.S. with an emphasis in archival studies at the University of Missouri, and holds a B.A. in history from Rutgers University. She has reading knowledge of Yiddish and French.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Research-Intro2 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
lecture
book club
LBI Book Club: When Time Stopped
About the Book
In this astonishing story that “reads like a thriller and is so, so timely,” (BuzzFeed) Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past. “Like Anne Frank’s diary, it offers a story that needs to be told and heard” (Booklist, starred review).
In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book.
Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo’s eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened.
When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.
A “beautifully told story of personal discovery,” (John le Carré) When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life, and this “gripping, expertly researched narrative will inspire those looking to uncover their own family histories” (Publishers Weekly). (description taken from Amazon)
About the Author
Ariana Neumann was born and grew up in Venezuela. She has a BA in History and French Literature from Tufts University, an MA in Spanish and Latin American Literature from New York University and a PgDIP in Psychology of Religion from University of London. She previously was involved in publishing, worked as a foreign correspondent for Venezuela’s The Daily Journal and her writing has appeared in a variety of publications including The European, the Jewish Book Council, and The New York Times.
Learn more about When Time Stopped here, and read a review in The New York Times.
Getting the Book
When Time Stopped can be found in most library systems and is in stock in numerous bookstores. You can also purchase it here.
Ticket Info: Free; register at lbi.org/events/book-club-when-time-stopped/ for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book club
book talk
The gilded Baghdadi Sassoons, one of the richest families in the world for over two centuries, built a vast empire through global finance and trade-cotton, opium, shipping-that reached across three continents. Against the monumental canvas of the Ottoman Empire and the changing face of the Far East, across Europe and Great Britain during the time of its farthest reach, Joseph Sassoon gives us a spectacular generational saga of the making (and undoing) of this family dynasty in his new book, The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire.
Dr. Joseph Sassoon, Professor of History and Political Economy and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, will be in conversation with Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register at programs.cjh.org/tickets/the-sassoons-2022-10-20 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
