concert
Opera and Democracy: Songs from Exile - In-person Event
The concert introduces two German-Jewish composers in American exile: Paul Aron and Rosy Geiger-Kullmann. Aron, a protagonist of the German interwar avant-garde, founded an opera company in New York in the 1950s to popularize the works of émigrés such as Darius Milhaud, Kurt Weill, Tadeusz Kassern, and Ernst Toch through piano arrangements and English translations. One of these - his English version of Toch’s short opera Egon & Emilie - will be presented alongside exile songs by Aron. Geiger-Kullmann, a successful opera composer of the Weimar Republic, was born in Frankfurt and fled from the Nazis to New York and later to Monterey. Excerpts from her opera Columbus, written after her arrival in New York, and two stage works from her years in Germany have been reconstructed and will be performed in excerpts – a world premiere.
Opera and Democracy: Listening to Exile is a series of concerts and discussions co-hosted by 1014 – space for ideas, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Goethe-Institut, the Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin, and American Society for Jewish Music. It is initiated by Thomas Mann House and curated by Thomas Mann Fellow Kai Hinrich Müller.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
concert
performance
Miryeml - In-person Event & Live on Zoom
Tea Arciszewska's Miryeml was heralded as a powerful memorial to the million children murdered in the Holocaust. This nearly-forgotten modernist masterpiece is now available in English translation for the first time.
Arciszewska was a dazzling figure in the prewar Warsaw Yiddish culture scene – an actress, dramaturge, salon hostess, and muse to the renowned Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz. In the 1920s, she began writing a play about the experiences of children during the pogroms that followed World War I. She worked on it for decades, first publishing Miryeml in 1958. Yiddish critics praised the play, seeing it as a powerful response to the Holocaust. They recognized the character Miryeml as an extraordinary figure in Yiddish drama. The play received an Alexander Shapiro Prize from the Congress for Jewish Culture for Best Yiddish Drama.
Miryeml is a modernist work that deftly integrates twentieth-century history and Jewish folklore into a narrative about children’s response to trauma, challenging our expectations of Yiddish theatre.
Directed by Allen Lewis Rickman, this “rehearsed reading” will be performed in Sonia Gollance’s new English translation.
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 admission is $15, and $10 for YIVO members and students. The Zoom livestream is free. Register at https://yivo.org/Miryeml for tickets.
Presented by:
performance
commemoration
Commemoration of the 81st Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at Der Shteyn - Riverside Park between 83rd and 84th St.
Join Congress for Jewish Culture, Friends of the Bund, the Jewish Labor Committee, Workers Circle, and YIVO on Friday, April 19, 2024 at 2 PM to commemorate and remember the bravery of the partisans of the Warsaw Ghetto. This annual gathering follows a tradition established in 1947 by Jewish partisans, ghetto fighters and Holocaust survivors at the site designated by the City of New York for a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It has become an annual gathering of Bundists and members of the secular, progressive Yiddish cultural community, as well as children and grandchildren of the original attendees.
Please join us to commemorate the 81st Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Speaking in the program are Julia Mintz and Lily Kshensky Baxter. Marcel Kshensky will chair. In the artistic program will be Sarah Gordon, Feygele Jacobs, Shifee Losacco, Zalmen Mlotek, Daniella Rabbani, and Esti Zanoni.
The program will take place at der shteyn, the memorial stone in Riverside Park between 83rd and 84th Street. The event takes place under the open skies and is free and open to the public.
Ticket Info: Free; no reservation required
Presented by:
commemoration
workshop
How to Do Research at YIVO: Reading a Finding Aid - Live on Zoom
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 24 million unique 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’s Reference and Outreach Archivist Ruby Landau-Pincus for a workshop on reading YIVO finding aids. A finding aid is a document that covers the background of an archival collection as well as a description of the materials within the collection and how they are arranged. This workshop will cover what information researchers can expect to discover in a finding aid and will provide an overview of a range of finding aid formats, from digital finding aids to legacy finding aids and other resources available for navigating collections in the YIVO Archives.
This event is open to anyone interested in doing research at YIVO or learning more about YIVO’s vast collections.
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:
workshop
lecture
The Golden Age of Classicism: Phoenix Chamber Ensemble Performs Music by Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert – In Person and Live on YouTube
Join Phoenix Chamber Ensemble pianists Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky and guest artists Titilayo Ayangadeon cello, Edwin Kaplan on viola, and Risa Schuchter on violin.
Program:
Franz Schubert: Sonatina in A Minor, D.385 for violin and piano
Joseph Haydn: Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XV: No.21
Franz Schubert: Ständchen, arranged for viola and piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Quartet in G Minor, K.478
Founded in 2005 by pianists Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky, the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble has, over the course of two decades, become a vital part of the New York classical community, presenting more than 70 public concerts at the Center for Jewish History. The ensemble has garnered a devoted following with its innovative programming and sensitive interpretations, earned an international reputation presenting concerts in Russia, Poland, Italy, and other European venues, and collaborated with numerous acclaimed guest artists, including clarinetist David Krakauer, the Grammy-nominated Enso Quartet, the Tesla Quartet, members of the Jasper String Quartet, the New York Little Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet.
Made possible by the Stravinsky Institute Foundation through the generous support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Presented in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute.
Ticket Info:
In person: $15 general; $13 senior/student; $12 members; register here
YouTube livestream: Pay what you wish; register here
Presented by:
lecture
lecture
Der oytser formen baym moler: Ryback's Formal Approach to Jewish Art - Live on Zoom
The visual and plastic works, as well as writings, of Jewish Ukrainian artist Issachar Ber Ryback (1897-1935) present a formal approach to national art, diverging from prevalent depictions of Jewish identity. Spanning illustration, drawing, painting, sculpture, stage design and theoretical writing, Ryback’s diverse body of work brings to the fore a material cult of everyday Eastern European Jewish life that was often overlooked. Central to the discussion is Shtetl, mayn khorever heym: a gedekhenish (Shtetl: My Destroyed Home, a Recollection), a lithograph album, conceived in 1917 within the Pale of Settlement and published in Berlin six years later in 1923. By closely analyzing the lithographs and Ryback’s contemporaneous writing, Noa Tsaushu examines the ways in which the artist exploited notions of materiality and visual representation to defy conventions of monolithic medium, push back against the Western European paradigm of Jewish aniconism, and challenge the hegemony of text as the Jewish medium of choice.
About the Speaker
Noa Tsaushu is a doctoral student of Yiddish Studies at Columbia University. She earned her master’s degree in Jewish Studies from Bar Ilan University, and her bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Guided by a comparative approach to cultural production, Noa specializes in modern Jewish art and Yiddish literature. Her dissertation, titled “Yiddish Art: The Desire for Cohesion among the Soviet-Yiddish Avant-Garde,” presents a theoretical framework for understanding the Yiddish avant-garde movement, a phenomenon in modern Yiddish culture that has been primarily approached in scholarship through historical and literary lenses. Noa is this year’s recipient of the Ruth and Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellowship in East European Arts, Music, and Theater at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. She recently translated and contributed to a volume of works from the Merrill C. Berman Collection titled Jewish Artists, Jewish Identity, 1917–1931.
Ticket Info: Free - registration is required
Presented by:
lecture
concert
Yiddish and Hebrew Song in the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic era contained a hotbed of Jewish musical activity. Following World War I, there was a spike of curiosity about Eastern European Jewry and Yiddish, which inspired many German-Jewish composers—from Cantor Leon Kornitzer to avant garde composer Stefan Wolpe—to explore Yiddish folksong in their music. At the same time, Berlin and Vienna acted as important publishing centers for the Jibneh Edition. In addition to featuring music of some German-Jewish composers such as Aron M. Rothmüller and Israel Brandmann, Jibneh Edition disseminated music of composers born in the Russian Empire associated with the Society for Jewish Folk Music such as Joel Engel, Joseph Achron, Michael Gnessin, and Alexander Krein, as well as the great Yiddish song composer Lazar Weiner writing in America. This rich musical activity bridged communities active in the East and West and reflected the linguistically and ideologically diverse aspirations of Jewish composers of its time. Join YIVO for a concert exploring Yiddish and Hebrew songs of the Weimar Republic.
Ticket Info: In-person admission is $15, and $10 for YIVO members and students. The Zoom livestream is free. Register at https://yivo.org/Weimar-Song for tickets.
Presented by:
concert
lecture
Jewish Self-Defense in the Russian Empire 1903-1905 - Live on Zoom
The phenomenon of self-defense against anti-Jewish violence prior to World War II has remained a largely unexplored topic. This presentation will delve into the history of Jewish local guard and self-defense units in Jewish communities in the Russian Empire before and during the failed 1905 revolution. Among the issues discussed will be the formation and leadership of Jewish self-defense units, the political and socio-economic background of their members, as well as contemporaneous Jewish discourse and debate on both the efficacy and the necessity of self-defense. By shedding light on Jewish resistance to pogroms through analysis of a variety of primary sources, Netta Ehrlich will contribute to our understanding of the development of Jewish self-defense both in theory and in practice.
About the Speaker
Netta Ehrlich is a doctoral candidate and MacCracken Fellow at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, NYU. Her dissertation focuses on self-defense in modern East European Jewish History. She has worked previously as an instructor and as a developer of educational programs at the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies. Netta is the 2023-2024 recipient of the Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellowship and the Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Fellowship at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
lecture
concert
Will There Still Be Singing? A Hanns Eisler Cabaret - In-person Event
The Leo Baeck Institute and the American Society for Jewish Music invite you for a night of live music.
Soprano Karyn Levitt performs Eric Bentley’s English versions of the songs of Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht, one of the 20th century’s great songwriting teams. Levitt’s close working relationship with Bentley, the foremost translator of Brecht’s lyrics and plays, gave her the opportunity of a lifetime to consult with the source of these acclaimed translations.
Karyn Levitt, Soprano<
The Hanns Eisler Trio
Eric Ostling, Musical Director and Piano
Michael Unger, Director
Ticket Info: Free; registration required
Presented by:
concert
concert
Jewish Songs and Dances for Piano: Jacob Weinberg’s "Ten Jewish Songs" (1933) - Live on YouTube
Join us for a performance of Jacob Weinberg’s Ten Jewish Songs (1933): a collection of Jewish folksongs, holiday songs, dances, and Hasidic nigunim in piano arrangements. Published by the Bloch Publishing Company, these arrangements were meant for use in homes and schools. Born in Odessa and educated at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, Weinberg was one of the composers of the Society for Jewish Folk Music who pioneered Jewish classical music. Famous for writing the first Hebrew language opera, The Pioneers (Hechalutz), Weinberg was a prolific composer with many songs, choral works, chamber compositions, and oratorios to his name.
This collection of ten pieces will be performed by pianist Thomas Kotcheff.
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: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
concert
concert
On Hollywood and Weimar: Songs of European Composers from the Golden Age of Film - In-person Event
The Leo Baeck Institute and the American Society for Jewish Music invite you for a night of live music with Karyn Levitt, Soprano and Jed Distler, Piano.
Many of Hollywood’s greatest film scores were written by émigré and exiled composers who fled Nazi Europe for Southern California. From dusty westerns and sweeping romances to the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock, this program celebrates the blending of the old world and the new to produce the uniquely hybrid sound of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Ticket Info: Free; registration required
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concert
exhibit opening
The Instant Art of Morris Katz - Exhibition Opening - In-person Event
“Painting,” according to Morris Katz, “is like shmearing a bagel.” A genuine performance artist, his standard routine would be to line up two dozen canvases and paint them all within the span of an hour – using only a palette knife and toilet paper – all the while cracking jokes and explaining his craft to rapt audiences. Called “a self-contained vaudeville act” by New York Magazine, Katz holds a unique place in the annals of the art world as a painter who not only worked with incredible speed – whipping up paintings within just minutes – but who did so while engaging his audiences with Borscht Belt style shtick and then auctioning the paintings off to all comers.
Join YIVO to celebrate the launch of our newest exhibition, The Instant Art of Morris Katz, with a reception catered by the Challah Fairy and exhibit tours offered by YIVO Senior Academic Advisor & Director of Exhibitions, Eddy Portnoy.
Exhibit courtesy of the Oeuvre Family Collection.
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:
exhibit opening
film and discussion
White Noise – In-Person Event & Livestreamed on YouTube (Discussion Only)
One week after the 2016 presidential election, white nationalists gathered in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the victory of President-elect Donald Trump. Addressing the crowd, the far-right leader Richard Spencer exclaimed, “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” to fanatical cheers and Nazi salutes. The Atlantic’s cameras captured exclusive footage of this moment, and the clip was shared widely on news networks and social-media platforms around the world.
WHITE NOISE, The Atlantic’s first feature documentary and Daniel Lombroso’s feature film debut, is the result of a four-year commitment to expose the roots of rising white nationalism in the U.S. and abroad. The film is a deeply reported journey through the underbelly of the alt-right, bringing viewers an unfiltered, clear-eyed look at a powerful extremist movement.
Join the Center for Jewish History for a screening of WHITE NOISE followed by a panel conversation with director and journalist Daniel Lombroso,Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, President of the Center for Jewish History and Professor of History at Fairfield University, and Anna Duensing, a historian specializing in evolving global politics of white supremacy across the twentieth century. They will discuss the ideas the alt-right has unleashed and how the movement has succeeded in infiltrating mainstream political discourse and shaping the direction of the United States.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HncFO8Sujvk&t=2s.
Fascism in America: Past and Present, edited by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, will be available for sale and signing by both editors after the screening and discussion.
About the Speakers
Daniel Lombroso is a director and journalist who spent the last decade building the Oscar-nominated video departments at The New Yorker and The Atlantic. His debut feature film, WHITE NOISE, based on his four years reporting inside the white power movement, premiered in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named one of the top documentaries of the year by Vox and The Boston Globe. His short, AMERICAN SCAR, received an Honorable Mention for the Grand Jury Prize at DocNYC and was nominated for a National Magazine Award. His latest film, NINA & IRENA, is Executive Produced by Errol Morris and was one of the most celebrated short documentaries of 2023. Lombroso’s work has premiered at Sundance, TIFF, IDFA, and been recognized with seven Vimeo Staff Picks. He was on last year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History and Professor of History at Fairfield University. He is the author of numerous books, including the co-edited volume (with Janet Ward), Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is an editor at the Journal of Holocaust Research and edits the blog The Counterfactual History Review.
Anna Duensing is a historian specializing in African American history, transnational social movements, and the evolving global politics of white supremacy across the twentieth century. She received her Ph.D. in History and African American Studies and an M.A. concentration in Public Humanities from Yale University and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. She is working on her first book manuscript, tentatively entitled Fascism Is Already Here: Civil Rights and the Making of a Black Antifascist Tradition. She is also the host of a new podcast, “What It Is and How to Fight It,” which offers listeners a variety of perspectives on the question of fascism in the United States, past and present, through interviews with authors and activists.
Ticket Info:
In person: $12 general; $10 senior/student; $9 members; register here
YouTube livestream: Pay what you wish; register here
Please Note: The discussion only will be livestreamed on YouTube at approximately 8:40 pm. You can stream the film on Amazon here in advance of the event.
Presented by:
film and discussion
book talk
Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism - Live on Zoom
A new wave of aspiring neo-Nazi terrorists has arisen—including the infamous Atomwaffen Division, and they have a bible: James Mason’s Siege, which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege documents the origins of Siege and shows how Mason’s vision emerged during debates in the 1970s after the splintering of the American Nazi Party/NSWPP. The second part of the book unveils for the first time how four 1980s musicians and publishers—Boyd Rice, Michael Moynihan, Adam Parfrey, and Nikolas Schreck—discovered and promoted the terrorist ideologue.
Join YIVO for a discussion of this book with author Spencer Sunshine.
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
book talk
Psychoanalysis and Jewish Languages - Live on Zoom
There is an academic interest in the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought. This book takes a different approach, turning its gaze not on Freud but rather on those who seek out his concealed Jewishness. What is it that propels the scholarly aim to show Freud in a Jewish light? Naomi Seidman explores attempts to "touch" Freud (and other famous Jews) through Jewish languages, seeking out his Hebrew name or evidence that he knew some Yiddish. Tracing a history of this drive to bring Freud into Jewish range, Seidman also charts Freud's responses to (and jokes about) this desire. More specifically, she reads the reception and translation of Freud in Hebrew and Yiddish as instances of the desire to touch, feel, "rescue," and connect with the famous professor from Vienna.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Seidman about this newly published book, led by scholar Ken Frieden.
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
book talk
Homes of the Past - Live on Zoom
In 1940s New York, immigrant Jewish scholars sought to build a museum to commemorate their lost worlds and people. Among the Jews who arrived in the United States in the early 1940s were a small number of Polish scholars who had devoted their professional lives to the study of Europe's Yiddish-speaking Jews at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Faced with the devastating knowledge that returning to their former homes and resuming their scholarly work there was no longer viable, they sought to address their profound sense of loss by continuing their work, under radically different circumstances, to document the European Jewish lives, places, and ways of living that were being destroyed. In pursuing this daunting agenda, they decided to create a museum to memorialize East European Jewry and educate American Jews about this legacy. YIVO scholars determinedly pursued this undertaking for several years, publicizing the initiative and collecting materials to exhibit. However, the Museum of the Homes of the Past was abandoned shortly after the war ended.
Homes of the Past explores this largely unknown episode of modern Jewish history and museum history and demonstrates that the project, even though it was never realized, marked a critical inflection point in the dynamic interrelations between Jews in America and Eastern Europe.
Join YIVO for a discussion with author Jeffrey Shandler about this book, led by Deborah Dash Moore.
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
book talk
Desires by Celia Dropkin - In-person Event and Live on Zoom
Desires (White Goat Press, 2024), the only novel by Celia (Tsilye) Dropkin (1887–1956), was originally serialized between March 31 and June 6, 1934, in the Jewish Daily Forward, or Forverts. Anita Norich’s new translation brings this novel to English readers.
Dropkin was born in Babruysk, a city in what is now Belarus, and immigrated to New York in 1912, where she adopted Yiddish as her primary literary language. In the 1930s, she turned to prose, publishing this novel and ten short stories that appeared in the journal Tsukunft (Future). In Desires, as in much of her work, Dropkin reflects on the internal and external conflicts of love, domesticity, and the erotic life. Through characters carefully drawn from her own immigrant milieu, Dropkin addresses the yearnings of both the body and mind, the tension between excitement and security, and the conflicting impulses that are part of the human condition.
Join YIVO for a discussion about this new translation with Norich in conversation with Director of Publishing and Public Programs at the Yiddish Book Center, Lisa Newman.
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
film screening and discussion
Joseph Brodsky: Epitaph for a Centaur, Six Years Later - In-person Event
Join YIVO and Poetry in America for a panel discussion and screening of a short film examining the life of Joseph Brodsky, the celebrated Russian-Jewish American writer and Nobel Laureate.
Through analyses of two of Brodsky's evocative poems, “Epitaph for a Centaur” and “Six Years Later,” this 25-minute film encapsulates Brodsky's exploration of identity, belonging, and the passage of time. The film examines the paradoxical relationship between the U.S. and Russia during the Cold War, intricately portrayed through the symbolic figure of the centaur—a representation of Brodsky’s own multi-faceted existence as Russian, American, and Jewish. By delving into the intricate language of Brodsky’s poetry, this short film explores Brodsky’s Jewish identity, his legacy, and the political undertones of his writing.
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:
film screening and discussion