News from YIVO: Spring 2024

Jonathan Brent Attends Meeting of African American and Jewish Community Leaders

In April, New York Mayor Eric Adams invited YIVO Executive Director & CEO Jonathan Brent to participate in an African American and Jewish community leaders meeting. The meeting was held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. During the session, Brent presented artifacts from YIVO’s archive on the civil rights movement that represented the connection between the Jewish and African American communities. Amongst the  materials presented was a booklet containing Yiddish translations of the poetry of Langston Hughes. Unbeknownst to Brent at the time of selecting materials to share, Hughes’s ashes are buried under the floorboards of the Schomburg Center, so it was indeed a very fitting artifact to show. This event is another example of the vast breadth of the YIVO Archives and the ability to use them to work with other communities to create shared understanding and connection.

Council Member Bottcher Visits the YIVO Archives

We were pleased to welcome New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher to YIVO on March 20. Touring the YIVO Archives, Council Member Bottcher marveled at the fact that the world’s largest collection of materials related to East European Jewry was located in his district. The Director of the YIVO Archives, Stefanie Halpern, showed him several artifacts from the collections. The Council Member was particularly moved by the “Entry and Exit” Book from Auschwitz Block 8 and the album signed by school children in the Łódź Ghetto. Following the tour, he also met with Alex Weiser, Director of Public Programs and the YIVO Learning and Media Center, to discuss our current and upcoming programming and the YLMC’s launch plans.

Antanas Ulpis Humanitarian Award Committee Appointed

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, together with the Martynas Mavydas National Library of Lithuania (MMNL), is pleased to announce the appointment of the Committee for the Antanas Ulpis Humanitarian Award. The award will be given annually for contributions to furthering Lithuanian-Jewish relations and understanding. Award recipients will receive a financial honorarium of $5,000, a certificate of appreciation, and a public ceremony held in Vilnius. The committee consists of Jonathan Brent, Aušrinė ilinskienė (Director General of the Martynas Mavydas National Library of Lithuania), Lara Lempert (Head of the Judaica Section of the Martynas Mavydas National Library of Lithuania), Arunas Gelunas (Director General at The Lithuanian National Museum of Art), and Alexander Rimas Domanskis (Attorney). The award is named in honor and memory of Antanas Ulpis, the Director of the Lithuanian National Book Chamber in Vilnius, from 1946-1980. In 1948, Ulpis saved thousands of Jewish books and documents from imminent destruction at the hands of the Soviets. The inaugural award is anticipated in 2025.

YIVO Cohosts the Association of Holocaust Organizations Annual Conference

YIVO was honored to co-host this year’s Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) Annual Conference, together with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. YIVO presented several panels over the course of the four-day conference, including an introduction to YIVO’s history and current activities by Jonathan Brent; a presentation on the exhibition and utilization of materials in the YIVO Archives both electronically and in person by Stefanie Halpern; a preview of the newest online exhibition in the YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum, Yitskhok Rudashevski: A Teenager’s Account of Life and Death in the Vilna Ghetto, by Karolina Ziulkoski and Alexandra Zapruder (Exhibition Co-Curator); and a presentation on the YIVO Learning and Media Center and the use of curated archival reproductions in lessons for visiting students by Alex Weiser and Susannah Trubman.

YIVO Sound Archivist Eléonore Biezunski Publishes Chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies

YIVO sound archivist Eléonore Biezunski recently published a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies edited by Tina Frühauf. The chapter, “The YIVO Sound Archive as a Living Space: Archiving and Revitalizing Klezmer,” traces the history of the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings in relation to the revitalization of klezmer music since the mid-1970s. Biezunski tells the story of the establishment of the YIVO Sound Archive in the early 1980s through 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 the “roots movement.” As a sound archivist and Yiddish musician, she presents the Archive as more than simply a repository of documents and possible sources. It is 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.

Watch our panel discussion about The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies.

Online Exhibition Shared with Lithuanian Schools across the US

The Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York created and distributed bookmarks to Lithuanian schools across the US to draw attention to the inaugural exhibition of the YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum: Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl. The exhibition was recently translated into Lithuanian with the help of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania for use in their school system.

View the Lithuanian translation.