Recent Grants Received by YIVO

YIVO is pleased to announce we have received the following grants:

$250,000 Grant from the Yassky Family, Establishing Yiddish Voices

The Yassky family in memory of Harriet Yassky z”l, a treasured YIVO volunteer, awarded a grant of $250,000 to fund YIVO’s latest initiative, Yiddish Voices, a series of translated literary works that will be curated by Alyssa Quint (Tablet Magazine/Yeshiva University) and Elissa Bemporad (Queens College/CUNY Graduate Center). The paperback editions will showcase texts (mostly translated from Yiddish) of literary and historical significance and will be published by Bloomsbury Press (UK). YIVO’s Yiddish Voices will launch its first volume, a collection of three Yiddish plays authored by women, later this year with an event that will honor Harriet’s memory. We are grateful to Lester Yassky, Rachel Yassky, Evan Yassky, Andrea Didisheim, David Yassky, and Diana Fortuna for their commitment to this special project.

$80,000 Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts

YIVO received a grant award of $80,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support YIVO’s work in fostering Jewish learning, identity, and community through courses and events inspired by our extensive Archives and Library. These programs bring the past to life and examine the complexity of Jewish identity and culture through a contemporary lens. It will also support YIVO’s dedicated, multi-generational staff, who range from their 20s to their 80s. They represent communities worldwide, with deep knowledge of Jewish history and culture and proficiency in 12 languages.

$78,000+ Cultural Development Fund Grant

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ Cultural Development Fund has awarded a grant for $78,260 to support YIVO’s public programs. YIVO was among 1,000+ organizations across New York City that received funding to deliver arts programming that contributes to the city’s extraordinary cultural life. YIVO’s public programs bring a unique depth and exposure to Jewish cultural heritage through vibrant lectures, panel discussions, concerts, and book talks. These programs engage a diverse audience and draw on YIVO’s Archives to look at the past through a contemporary lens. Themes include folksong and classical music, theater, pre-war European Jewish life, politics, immigration, LGBTQI identities, and the Holocaust.

$18,000 Grant from Silvian Foundation

A grant of $18,000 from the Shlomo and Cindy Silvian Foundation, Inc. has been awarded to YIVO to help conserve, process, and digitize the Holocaust collections that form part of YIVO’s Jewish Labor and Political Archive. Collected by the Bund Archives, these collections document various aspects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, including Nazi atrocities in extermination camps and ghettos, armed and intellectual acts of Jewish resistance, and the renewal of Jewish life in the immediate post-war period.

$9,000+ from the National Endowment for the Humanities

YIVO has received a grant for $9,417 from the National Endowment for the Humanities’s Division of Preservation and Access to purchase the materials to rehouse YIVO’s historic Jewish Labor and Political Archive, which documents Jewish political, labor, and social movements in the United States and Europe. Consisting of 900 linear feet of materials documenting activities from 1870 to 1992, the grant will allow YIVO archivists to further ensure the preservation of these valuable materials.