YIVO in the News/Staff Notes – June 2014

On June 16, Steven J. Zipperstein, Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University and YIVO’s first Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar, delivered a keynote address in Budapest at the Central European University’s international conference “Narratives of Violence.” Professor Zipperstein’s lecture, drawn from research he conducted while at YIVO this past spring, was  entitled “Inside Kishinev’s Pogrom: Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Michael Davitt, and the Burdens of Truth.”

On June 17, Cecile Kuznitz spoke on “YIVO and the Geography of Interwar Yiddish Culture” at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

On June 26, YIVO Senior Research Scholar Marek Web delivered a lecture, “The role of YIVO in Yiddish culture: Ponderings of a Jewish archivist” at the opening of an exhibition, The women’s section in the synagogue- women in Yiddish culture, at the Centre for Jewish Culture and Education in the White Stork Synagogue in Wroclaw, Poland.

YIVO Library Intern Michaela Walker has posted an article about the beginning of her summer internship at YIVO on a Bard College blog.

In addition to the New York Times piece that ran last month, the new YIVO Digital Archive on Jewish Life in Poland has been profiled on Recordclick, a genealogy website, “YIVO Brings Pre-War Poland Alive for the Family History Researcher” and archivauskunft.de, “YIVO Web Portal Jewish Life in Poland,” and is linked to from dozens of other websites.

YIVO’s participation in Judaica Europeana projects is noted in Dov Winer’s article for Judaica Librarianship, “Judaica Europeana: An Infrastructre for Aggregating Jewish Content” and Lena Stanley Clamp’s “Feeding Digital Humanities.” In July, YIVO Head Archivist and Librarian Lyudmila Sholokhova will take part in a Judaica Europeana panel at the 10th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies in Paris.

YIVO receives prominent mention in two articles on the origins of Yiddish in Tablet: Cherie Woodworth’s “Where Did Yiddish Come From?” and Batya Ungar-Sargon’s “The Mystery of the Origins of Yiddish Will Never Be Solved.” Jonathan Brent and Paul Glasser are quoted in the latter article. In another Tablet article, “The Lost Poems of Ka-Tzetnik 135633,” Menachem Butler mentions his discovery of an extremely rare book in the YIVO Library.

The Summer 2014 issue of the Jewish Review of Books has two articles mentioning YIVO, Chae-Ran Freeze’s “The Shtetl Trap” and Glenn Dynner’s “Brief Kvetches: Notes to a 19th-Century Miracle Worker,” which focuses on YIVO’s Papers of Eliyahu Guttmacher. In the same issue, there is a review of a book of poetry by Tuvia Reubner by former YIVO staff member Shoshana Olidort.

Jordan Kutzik’s “How Do You Talk Dirty in Yiddish?” in the Forward mentions the YIVO Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Fellowship awarded to Zohar Weiman-Kelman to research the late Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter’s card catalog of Yiddish sexual terminology.

An article originally written by Nathan Glazer in 1950, “Study of Man: What Sociology Knows About American Jews,” is now available in Commentary’s online archive and prominently mentions the work of sociologists associated with YIVO, such as Jacob Lestschinsky.

A link to Helena Gindi’s interview with David Fishman in Yedies on April 18 is prominently featured on the website of a Future Perspectives conference on Jews and the Ukrainian revolution in London.

“Was Jabo Liberal? New Works on Jabotinsky & Begin” in The Partners for Progressive Israel Blog mentions Hillel Halkin’s book launch at YIVO on June 2.

The YIVO Encyclopedia’s entry on Birobidzhan is mentioned in a Times of Israel story on an exhibition on Birobdzhan at Northwestern University.

Research in the YIVO Archives is mentioned in two online articles: “The Mizinke Dance: Tradition, Folklore, or Other?” (Jewish Action: The Magazine of the Orthodox Union) and “Professional Development Leave – Gleeson Library Style.”

The Wikipedia entry on the Yiddish newspaper Der Tog (The Day) includes in its citations a link to a feature on the David Shapiro Papers that appeared in Yedies on January 24, 2014.

The June 17th YIVO Public Program “Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America” made the “What’s hot” list in events in New York in The Jewish Week and NYBlueprint.