presented by YIVO

Follow Di Shekhter-tekhter, accompanied by their Musical Director and father, Binyumen Schaechter, in this film premiere of their one-of-a-kind musical revue. Through a potpourri of characters from the Yiddish songbook, the dynamic duo inspires with themes that are universal and contemporary, such as young love, family relationships and class struggle. Academy Award®-nominated director Josh Waletzky incorporates interviews that provide an insight into this family and their unique mission to share Yiddish with the world.

Yiddish with English subtitles.

presented by LBI

Between 1933 and 1945, the central institutions of Nazi persecution and terror were located on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, just steps away from Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin. In this building were the Secret State Police Office with its own “house prison,” the leadership of the SS and, during the Second World War, the Reich Security Main Office. Today, this house of terror is gone, but a permanent exhibition within the old foundations documents the apparatus of Nazi persecution. Dr. Andreas Nachama, director of the “Topography of Terror” documentation center, will discuss the exhibition’s new permanent home as well as an exhibition coming to the United Nations in New York.

presented by LBI

Newly recognized as one of the 20th century’s great writers, Joseph Roth wrote beautifully original prose that is still reaching new audiences as new translations of his works appear, even 73 years after the author’s death. In January 2012, W.W. Norton will offer a new window on Roth’s life when it publishes poet Michael Hoffman’s translations of Roth’s letters, many of which are preserved in LBI archives. W.W. Norton and LBI present a panel discussion of Roth’s literary legacy moderated by W.W. Norton executive editor Robert Weil and featuring New Yorker fiction editor Willing Davidson, the author and record producer Anthony Heilbut, and author Fran Lebowitz.

presented by YIVO

A program highlighting orchestra and chamber music works by little-known Jewish composers. Featured pieces include Joachim Stutchevsky's "Klezmer Wedding Music," a sextet by Alexander Krein, and a suite for chamber orchestra by Lev Aronson.

presented by YIVO

The man who would become S. An-sky--ethnographer, war correspondent, author of the best-known Yiddish play, The Dybbuk--was born Shloyme-Zanvl Rapoport in 1863, in Russia’s Pale of Settlement. His journey from the streets of Vitebsk to the center of modern Yiddish and Hebrew theater, by way of St. Petersburg, Paris, and war-torn Austria-Hungry, was both extraordinary and in some ways typical: Marc Chagall, another child of Vitebsk, would make a similar transit a generation later. Like Chagall, An-sky was loyal to multiple, conflicting Jewish, Russian, and European identities. And like Chagall, An-sky made his physical and cultural transience manifest as he drew on Jewish folk culture to create art that defied nationality.

Leaving Vitebsk at 17, An-sky forged a number of apparently contradictory paths. A witness to peasant poverty, pogroms, and war, he tried to rescue the vestiges of disappearing communities even while fighting for reform. A loner addicted to reinventing himself--at times a Russian laborer, a radical orator, a Jewish activist, an ethnographer of Hasidism, a wartime relief worker--An-sky saw himself as a savior of the people’s culture and its artifacts. What united the disparate strands of his life was his eagerness to speak to and for as many people as possible, regardless of their language or national origin.

In this first full-length biography in English, Gabriella Safran, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University, using Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and French sources, recreates this neglected protean figure who, with his passions, struggles, and art, anticipated the complicated identities of the European Jews who would follow him.

presented by YIVO

From the first days of World War I, Russian commanders pointed to the alleged disloyalty of Russia’s Jewish population. The Russian army began to solve the "problem" of Jewish disloyalty using local and mass expulsions from various localities, hostage-taking, and restrictions on the movement of Jews in the frontal zone. This lecture by Dr. Semion Goldin examines the reasons for such an attitude towards the Jews and its consequences for the international and domestic situation of the Russian Empire in 1914 -1917.

presented by CJH

Speaker: V. Chapman-Smith

Special collections and archives, like other cultural institutions, are struggling today with audience and patron sustainability. Many institutions are experiencing drops in patron use and program attendance. Others face challenging financial situations, which have required reductions in staff and operating hours. Others feel they are barely holding their own. Can there be an upward spiral for archives? What strategies can archives employ to sustain relevance and grow increasingly vital over time? Through an examination of case studies and discussion, attendees will learn about some tested effective strategies that leverage societal trends to build new audiences and community purposes for archives.

V. Chapman Smith is currently the Regional Strategic Liaison in the Office of the Chief Operations Officer at the National Archives at Philadelphia and had served as the New York State Archivist between 1996 and 2002. Ms. Chapman-Smith has nearly 30 years of executive leadership in records administration, history public programming and organizational capacity building. During this time, she has earned a distinguished reputation for bringing fresh approaches and innovations to community engagement within the institutions she has led.

Click here to download a pdf copy of V. Chapman Smith's slideshow presentation.

This talk is the inaugural event of the Center for Jewish History’s new series, Archival Leaders Advocate: Annual Seminar at the Center for Jewish History. Our annual series will feature presentations by leading figures in the archives profession on timely issues relevant to both emerging and seasoned archives professionals.

presented by CJH

From Access to Integration seeks to build a network of communication for professionals at archives, libraries and museums to partner on future projects and expand on one another's existing work within the digital humanities. As the first formal meeting of information professionals to address these specific needs for the discipline of Jewish studies, the conference will highlight collective solutions to the challenges faced by many institutions in employing emerging technologies for the study of Jewish history, and move participating professionals and their institutions toward a framework of collaboration.

The conference enjoyed generous support from the David Berg Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe, the Leon Levy Foundation and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

presented by LBI and The Asia Society

Leo Baeck and The Asia Society present a lecture by Paul Mendes-Flohr about the fascinating relationship between German-Jewish intellectuals Albert Einstein and Martin Buber and the Bengal Poet Rabindranath Tagore.

By the 1930s, European intellectuals had become interested in Eastern art and philosophy, especially in divergent concepts of art, science, music, education and religion. At that time, Rabindranath Tagore was the preeminent representative of Eastern culture – a Nobel laureate, poet, writer, artist and thinker whose world travels brought him into contact with luminaries from all disciplines.

Einstein and Buber represented Western, European intellectuals whose interests and ideas ranged from politics to music. Tagore corresponded and met with each during his visits to Europe, and their discussions covered topics including politics, Zionism, science, art literature, and religion.

Tagore identified the value of culture as a transnational basis for global justice, human rights and peace. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish thought in the divinity school at the University of Chicago will examine the cultural identities that informed this fascinating dialogue.

presented by YIVO

New York stage actor and singer Hy Wolfe returns to our stage with a show featuring Yiddish theater and folk songs and stories. With English translations throughout, this event is a pleasure for Yiddish speakers and non-Yiddish speakers alike.

presented by YIVO

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

presented by YIVO, Co-sponsored by the Embassy Series in cooperation with the Lithuanian Consulate and the Lithanian Delegation to the United Nations

In commemoration of the year of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania, Jerome Barry highlights songs composed in the Jewish Ghetto in Vilnius during World War II and cantorial music. Jerome Barry, baritone, Yuval Waldman, violin and Edvinas Minkstimas, piano.

presented by YIVO

For many years, the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union was the subject of much speculation and controversy. Recent research, however, has revealed that Julius Rosenberg and several other accused spies - many of whom were Jews - in fact worked for Soviet intelligence. This event will bring together the authors of important books on American Jewish spies for the USSR.

presented by CJH, co-sponsored by LBI, Skirball Dept. for Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU

A day of discussion and debate devoted to exploring the thought and legacy of Moses Mendelssohn, the 18th-century founder of modern Jewish thought. A group of international scholars highlighted recent scholarship related to contemporary issues in religion, secularism, politics, culture, language and identity.

For more information, visit the Symposium web page.

presented by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research together with the Congress for Jewish Culture, CYCO Books, the Forward Association, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen's Circle

Speakers:
Dr. Itzik Gottesman (Yiddish), Associate Editor of the Yiddish Forward
Dr. Jonathan Brent (English),Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Appearing in the artistic program:
Yelena Shmulenson and Hy Wolfe
accompanied by Steve Sterner at the piano with a selection of Soviet Yiddish songs and Shane Baker with recitations.

presented by YIVO

Join mezzo-soprano Re'ut Ben-Ze'ev and linguist Paul Glasser for a musical expedition through Yiddish dialects. Learn how to recognize the origins of a folksong from the lyrics.

presented by YIVO

Lisa Willson, soprano, Elena Berman-Gantard, piano, with young singers Dina Malka Botwinik and Emma Gantard. Featuring Songs by Vilna-born Montreal composer David Botwinik.

presented by YIVO

Natan M. Meir, Lorry I. Lokey Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies, Portland State University. From a small group of merchants in the early 1860s, the Jewish population of Kiev grew by leaps and bounds to become one of the largest Jewish communities in the Russian Empire. This talk charts this fascinating community’s growth, achievements, and challenges (including intra-communal divisions, pogroms, and the Beilis Affair).

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Joshua Karlip, Assistant Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

The YIVO Institute is pleased to present a special evening with acclaimed novelist Philip Roth. Roth read excerpts from his new novel, Nemesis (2010), which tells the story of a terrifying polio epidemic raging in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 and its devastating effect on the closely knit, family-oriented community and its children. Through this story, Roth addresses profound questions of human existence: What types of choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand circumstance?

Following the reading, there will be a panel discussion with YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent, Bernard Avishai (Hebrew University), Igor Webb (Adelphi University) and Steven Zipperstein (Stanford University).

Philip Roth is an American novelist and one of the most honored authors of his generation. His books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, which featured his best-known character, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roth's novels. In 2001, he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction for lifetime achievement. He is the only living American novelist to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. His fiction, set frequently in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction and for its provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity. His most recent novel, Nemesis (2010) is about the devastating effects of a polio epidemic in Newark, New Jersey in 1944.

Bernard Avishai teaches business at Hebrew University. A Guggenheim fellow, Avishai holds a doctorate in political economy from the University of Toronto. Avishai has written dozens of articles and commentaries for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harvard Business Review, Harper's and many other publications. He is the author of three books on Israel, including the widely read The Tragedy of Zionism, and the recently published The Hebrew Republic. His new book, Promiscuous: Portnoy's Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness, will be published next year.

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Brent also serves as editorial director of Yale University Press and founder of its distinguished Annals of Communism series. He has published numerous interviews and essays on Mr. Roth. Brent is co-author of Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (2004) and is currently writing a biography of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel.

Igor Webb has published poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. His memoir Against Capitulation was published in London by Quartet Books (1984). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker and Poetry (Chicago). His most recent publications include his book, Rereading the Nineteenth Century: Studies in the Old Criticism from Austen to Lawrence, published by Palgrave Macmillan (2010); The Death Paintings published in the spring in the Notre Dame Review (2010); and the stories Later and Reza Says published in The Hudson Review (2011). His review of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which first appeared in Partisan Review, is collected in Harold Bloom's Critical Views edition of Philip Roth. He is completing a collection of stories, under the working title Buster Brown's America, and is Professor of English at Adelphi University.

Steven J. Zipperstein is Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University and his most recent book is Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing which appeared in paperback with Yale University Press this spring.

presented by YIVO

Jordana de Bloeme, York University. Explores the role of the Vilna Educational Society (Vilbig) in the dissemination of modern secular Yiddish education and culture throughout Vilna and the Vilna region from 1924 until its liquidation in 1940. An umbrella-like educational organization founded at the behest of parents whose children attended Yiddish secular schools and by Yiddishist pedagogues, its goals were to serve as an intermediary between the Yiddishist intelligentsia and Yiddish-speaking masses, as well as to broaden the audience for Yiddish high culture. This talk will shed light on the complexities of modern secular Yiddish education and the attempt to create a Yiddishist identity among an entire generation of Yiddish-speaking youth.

presented by YIVO

Eliyana R. Adler, Sosland Foundation Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In a New York Times interview in 2000, a European-born rabbi pronounced that, "Before 1925 most [Jewish] girls didn't have an education. They only knew how to peel potatoes." However, the reality was quite different. Between 1831 and 1881, over 100 private schools for Jewish girls opened in the Pale of Jewish Settlement. Dr. Adler's work helps us to understand not only how the schools functioned, but also how they ushered in new developments in Russian Jewish education and history.

presented by YIVO and YUM

Distinguished scholars reflect on their formative years in one of North America's most vibrant Jewish communities. Panelists Lois Dubin (Smith College), Jack Kugelmass (University of Florida), Allan Nadler (Drew University) and Ruth Wisse (Harvard University) discuss their distinct and shared educational, religious, communal and cultural experiences of Montreal.

presented by YIVO

In honor of Boris Sandler's 30 years as a Yiddish writer and 13 years as editor of the Forward, Evgeny Kissin performed on the piano and recited Yiddish poetry; Vladimir Milshteyn performed on the violin; Rita Koyfman and the Schaechter tekhter sang; Rafael Goldwasser performed a short story; and the guest of honor read from his own works.

presented by YIVO and LBI

A lecture by scholar Gitta Honegger on the 2004 Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek's recent, internationally acclaimed play Rechnitz. The play recounts the murder of 200 Hungarian Jews in the Austrian town of Rechnitz on the eve of the Russian army’s arrival in 1945. The massacre was initially shrouded in secrecy until several witnesses went public with an intriguing web of half-truths and deception transforming this crime against humanity into myth. The events at Rechnitz, while speaking directly to Austrian involvement in the Holocaust, also resonate around the globe today where ethnic violence exists. The talk includes excerpts from a rare and exclusive video interview with Elfriede Jelinek.

Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian novelist and playwright who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. Born in 1946, she represents the first post-World War II generation of Austrian writers struggling to come to terms with their country’s involvement in the Holocaust. The examination of Austria’s ambivalence in dealing with its past has been a driving force in her countless plays and novels. Jelinek’s innovative linguistic strategies and uncompromising critical vision have earned her numerous prestigious awards.

Professor Gitta Honegger (Arizona State University) is a Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow. She has translated plays by Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke and Elias Canetti, among others and is the author of the award winning cultural biography Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian.

presented by CJH Lillian Goldman Scholars Working Group on the Jewish Book

This program was made possible by the generous support of Amy P. Goldman and the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust and presented by the Lillian Goldman Scholars Working Group on the Jewish Book.

In collaboration with the Jewish Book Council, the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies

What makes a Jewish book?
Who are the People of the Book?
How have Jewish books changed with changes in technology?

The "history of the book" is a lively field of historical scholarship that looks at authorship, publication, and dissemination of texts of all kinds as windows onto culture and society in different periods and places. Book history also plumbs the relationships between writers, scribes, printers, and readers. Join us as an international group of scholars examine the contours of Jewish identity through the study of texts in Hebrew and other Jewish languages, and of the Jews and non-Jews who produced and consumed them.

Program

1:00pm
Welcome
Judith C. Siegel, Director of Academic and Public Programs, CJH

1:15 pm
What was a Jewish Book? Perspectives from Three Periods in History
Moderator
Adam Shear | University of Pittsburgh

Panelists
Katrin Kogman-Appel | Ben-Gurion University
The Illuminated Hebrew Book in the Middle Ages
Menahem Schmelzer | Jewish Theological Seminary
Glimpses into Some Phases of Jewish Book History
Gennady Estraikh | New York University
The “Vilna Trend” Versus the “Warsaw Trend” in the Pre-World War I Yiddish Publishing

2:30pm
Coffee Break

3:00pm
Texts and Cultures: Three Case Studies
Moderator
Marjorie Lehman | Jewish Theological Seminary

Panelists:
David Stern | University of Pennsylvania
The Mikraot Gedolot in its Sixteenth Century Contexts
Elisheva Carlebach | Columbia University
In Praise of Error: Print and Script in Calendar History
Jeremy Stolow | Concordia University
Prayer Books, Cookbooks, Self-Help Books: Designer Orthodoxy and the ArtScroll Revolution

4:00pm
The Future of the Jewish Book
Moderator
Jonathan Karp | American Jewish Historical Society

Panelists
Jeffrey Shandler | Rutgers University
Looking Beyond the Book—and Back: Lessons from the History of Jews and New Media
Alana Newhouse | Tablet Magazine
Eliyahu Stern | Yale University
The Rise of Print and the Ideological Jew

Conclusions

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Eve Jochnowitz

presented by YIVO

Glenn Dynner, Associate Professor, Sarah Lawrence College. During the second half of the 19th century, Eastern Europe underwent a difficult transition from an agrarian, feudal-based economy to a more urban, capitalist one. Jews, who played a key role in the older economy as factors and lessees of noble-owned taverns, were particularly affected. A horde of petitions (kvitlekh) to the mystical leader Eliyahu Guttmacher, "the Tsadik of Gratz" (Grodzisk Wielkopolski, 1796-1874), located in the YIVO archives, provides rare and poignant glimpses of shtetl Jews as they struggled desperately to adjust to a changing world.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Rafael Goldwaser

presented by YIVO

Dr. Tomasz Lysak

Wilhelm Brasse served as an official photographer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp recording new arrivals but also portraying camp officials or medical experiments. For a long time the images he took were not credited and the filmmaker Dobrowolski brought his protagonist out of self-imposed anonymity. A screening of the film Portrecista (Portrait Photographer) will be accompanied by a lecture by Dr. Lysak on photography as a medium in the camp and its use in commemoration after the war.

presented by YIVO

Eitan Kensky, Harvard University.

This paper looks at Abraham Cahan’s 1917 novel within the context of Yiddish and American realism. Cahan’s novel presents a knotty intertwining of clothes, sex, and capitalism that can only be unpacked by understanding the nuances of his literary thought.

presented by YIVO

Dovid Katz, Adina Cimet

Thirty-five years ago, Dr. Dovid Katz, then a student in New York, began to look for elderly Yiddish informants from the Lithuanian (Litvak) lands. When the Soviet Union collapsed and it became possible to carry out expeditions "in the old country," Dovid began to conduct one or two expeditions a year. In 1999, he relocated to Lithuania and was able to continue the project on a much more intensive basis.

At his YIVO lecture, Dovid spoke about some of his adventures on the road, particularly in Belarus and Lithuania, over the last two decades, and he showed some maps. He will also discussed everyday life, beliefs and opinions, and hardships of the people he has met on the way.

presented by YIVO

Joshua Karlip, Assistant Professor, Yeshiva University.

In both the ghettoes of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and in the Americas, Yiddishist intellectuals reacted to the unfolding genocide by sanctifying the entirety of the East European Jewish experience, both religious and secular. This lecture analyzed this cultural retrenchment as manifested in both the South-American Yiddish journal Shriftn and in the Vilna ghetto diary of Zelig Hirsh Kalmanovitch.

presented by YIVO

Maria Cieśla, Polish Academy of Sciences

What are the differences between "Polish" and "Lithuanian" Jews in the early modern period? In this way, the more general question of the formation of the "Litvaks" was approached.

presented by Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York and the Metro NYC Chapter of ARMA

Do WikiLeaks and its complex, attendant issues shift our conceptualization of our roles as information professionals? How might WikiLeaks change the public's views on usage of and access to archives and records? To what extent is the most recent release of diplomatic cables a product of information mismanagement?

Addressing these and many more questions, the speakers include Trudy Peterson, former Acting Archivist of the United States (1993-1995) and current representative for the Society of American Archivists on the Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee; Fred Pulzello, Solutions Architect in the Information Governance practice at MicroLink LLC; James Fortmuller, Manager of Systems Security at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in Washington, DC; Mark Matienzo, Digital Archivist in Manuscripts and Archives at Yale University Library; and Derek Bambauer, Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. The panel was moderated by Peter Wosh, Director of the Archives/Public History Program and Clinical Associate Professor of History at New York University.

The recording of this event was made possible with the support of MetLife.

presented by YIVO

Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Polish Academy of Sciences. This is a story of how the Yiddish newspaper Haynt (1908-1939) evolved from sensationalist "yellow journalism" to a breeding ground for Jewish intellectuals in interwar Warsaw.

presented by YIVO and the New Yiddish Repertory Theater

A staged reading presented in Yiddish. Prof. Nahma Sandrow introduced the play in English.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Elissa Bemporad, Jerry and William Ungar Assistant Professor of East European Jewish History at Queens College, The City University of New York

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Anna Rutkowski, Doctoral candidate, History, Jagiellonian University, Cracow

presented by YIVO

Famed Soviet Yiddish actor and director Shloyme Mikhoels were discussed by Prof. Jeffrey Veidlinger, an expert on Soviet Yiddish theater; Prof. Gennady Estraikh, a specialist in Soviet Jewish history and culture; and Joshua Rubenstein, an expert on the end of the Stalin era.

presented by YIVO

Garrett Eisler (CUNY Graduate Center)

This talk focuses on some of the key stage and screen artists who rallied American support for the Jews of Europe and Palestine in the 1940s. Through these struggles, Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, Ben Hecht, and Kurt Weill consistently stood at the vanguard of a Jewish-American "Cultural Front."

presented by YIVO

A program of rarely heard masterworks from the Sidney Krum Jewish Music and Yiddish Theater Memorial Collections at YIVO performed by young artists from premier American music schools. The Fall Concert focused on unique Yiddish folk songs, theater and art songs, and songs of the labor movement and the Holocaust, featuring works by Sholem Secunda, Avraham Goldfaden, Mordecai Gebirtig, Mark Warshavsky, and others.

Preconcert Lecture: "Reimagining Tradition or Preserving Its Legacy: Two New Approaches to Old Yiddish Songs" (Sponsored by the Jewish Music Forum)
Asya Vaisman, Visiting Research Scholar at Indiana University

presented by YIVO

Masha Benya was an accomplished singer both of classical music and of Yiddish folksongs, who died in 2007. Three years after her death, friends remembered her with their recollections of Masha, with musical performances by Re'ut Ben-Ze’ev and Rafael Frieder, and with her recordings.

presented by YIVO

Rebecca Kobrin, Assistant Professor of History, Columbia University.

Between 1919 and 1939, Jewish emigres in the United States sent millions of dollars to rebuild their former homes scattered throughout Polish Lithuania. This talk focuses on the role Jewish emigres and their philanthropy played in reshaping political, social, and economic life in Brisk and Vilna, the two historic intellectual centers of Lithuanian Jewry. While the stated goal of Jewish emigre generosity was to relieve economic distress, it often caused a reshaping of Jews' understanding of their place in the new nation-states of Eastern Europe during this era of political and economic upheaval.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Dr. Maroš Borský, The Slovak Jewish Heritage Route Project Director

In 2007, Dr. Maroš Borský launched the Slovak Jewish Heritage Route. A network linking 24 prominent Jewish heritage sites around Slovakia, it includes synagogue buildings, branches of the Museum of Jewish Culture, and three historic Jewish cemeteries. In this talk Dr. Borský discusses his current work.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Leye Robinson, Columbia University

This is a Yiddish language event

presented by AJS and CJH

This event, part of the CJH/AJS Professional Development Series in Jewish Studies, features a conversation between David Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and the Ella Darivoff Director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and Judith Ginsberg, Executive Director of the Nash Family Foundation and former program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. The session was moderated by Michael Glickman, Chief Administrative Officer of the Center for Jewish History and head of the Center's development initiatives.

Fundraising for Jewish Studies considers how to cultivate support for specific projects and events, as well as how to involve donors and foundations in the long-term vision and aspirations of your program and institution. The session also explores how fundraising for Jewish studies has changed over the past few years, and ways in which Jewish studies programs can best communicate their goals and activities in these new economic times.

presented by Max Weinreich Center at YIVO, co-sponsored by Hunter College and the Posen Foundation

Simon Dubnow was born in 1860 in Mstistavl, Russia and was killed by the Nazis in the Riga Ghetto in 1941. Dubnow was the first to study Jewish social history and was a proponent of Jewish Diaspora nationalism. He opposed Zionism and Marxism, and he was active in the struggle for cultural autonomy for Jews in their countries of residence. Dubnow was a major theorist and proponent of secular Yiddish culture. He was influential in the founding of YIVO and a strong supporter of the Institute.

On October 24, 2010, YIVO conducted a day-long conference on the life and career of this renowned historian. Panels included "Dubnow on the East European Jewish Past," "Dubnovism in the 2oth Century" and "Dubnow and Jewish Ideologies of His Time." The keynote address was delivered by Prof. Robert Seltzer.

presented by YIVO

For much of the twentieth century, rumors have circulated about Lenin's Jewish roots - often assumed to be nothing more than antisemitic propaganda. In his new book, Lenin's Jewish Question, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern examines Lenin's controversial background, in particular the now-documented fact that Lenin had a maternal Jewish great-grandfather named Moshko Blank. Professor Petrovsky-Shtern discussed his discoveries about Moshko Blank, Blank's conversion to Christianity, and related questions, such as why Soviet communists sought to suppress any discussion of Lenin's Jewishness, why Russian racists attempted to portray Lenin as a Jew, and why Lenin approached the Jewish question as he did.

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is an Associate Professor of Jewish History at Northwestern University, specializing in the history of Russian Jewry. He is also the author of Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity and The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Hannah Kliger, Penn State Abington

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chaim Grade, one of the great Yiddish poets and novelists of the 20th century, Ruth Wisse discussed Grade's works; Allan Nadler discussed the milieu that Grade grew up in; Jonathan Brent shared his recent experience examining Grade's library and papers; and recorded remarks by Curt Leviant will be shown (not included in this video).

The symposium was preceded by a screening of the English-language film The Quarrel (Canada, 1991) based on Grade's story "My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner."

An exhibition of Grade's books, manuscripts, and letters from the YIVO archives and library were on display.

presented by YIVO

Join distinguished scholar and author David Gelernter as he seeks to answer the deceptively simple question: What is Judaism really about? Gelernter views Judaism as one of humanity's most profound and sublimely beautiful achievements. In his new book, Judaism: A Way of Being, he lays out Jewish beliefs on four basic topics - the sanctity of everyday life; man and God; the meaning of sexuality and family; good, evil and the nature of God's justice in a cruel world - and conveys a profound and stirring sense of what it means to be Jewish. David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale University and contributing editor at the Weekly Standard. He is the author of several books, including Mirror Worlds, The Muse in the Machine, and the novel 1939.

presented by YIVO

Eve Jochnowitz

presented by YIVO

Ber Kotlerman, Bar-Ilan University

Ber Boris Kotlerman was born in Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia and grew up in Birobidzhan. Since 2004 he has been a senior lecturer in the Judaica faculty of Bar-Ilan University and a professor of Yiddish Studies. In 2007 he founded the Far Eastern Research center for Jewish Culture and Yiddish which has already conducted two international summer programs in Yiddish.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Marc Caplan

presented by YIVO

Professor Alyssa Quint, Princeton University
Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director, National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene
Dani Marcus, actress recently featured in The Adventures of Hershele Ostropolyer at the Folksbiene
Nimmy Weisbrod, actor recently featured in The Adventures of Hershele Ostropolyer at the Folksbiene

Alyssa Quint will discuss aspects of the operetta's narrative alongside some visual material. Zalmen Mlotek will accompany actors Dani Marcus and Nimmy Weisbrod in a number of musical selections from Shulamis. Quint and Mlotek's presentation is part of their work-in-progress, a bilingual (Yiddish/English) critical edition of the operetta that will include arrangements by Mr. Mlotek, an introduction by Alyssa Quint, and a translation into English by theater scholar Nahma Sandrow

presented in collaboration with the FOLKSBIENE: THE NATIONAL YIDDISH THEATRE

presented by YIVO

YIVO launched the online version of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, www.yivoencyclopedia.org. The program from that evening that is presented here includes remarks by Jonathan Brent, YIVO's executive director; Gershon Hundert, the encyclopedia's editor in chief; and Joseph Steinberg, whose charitable trust is the website's principal sponsor. Jeffrey Edelstein, the encyclopedia's project director, then gave a demonstration of the site's features.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Kalman Weiser, Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, York University

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

This is the second in a new series of concerts devoted to rarely heard masterworks from the Sidney Krum Jewish Music and Yiddish Theater Memorial Collections at YIVO, performed by gifted young artists from The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College, and the Lucy Moses School. This concert featured works by Aaron Copland, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Joseph Achron and others. Special guest appearances by singer Juliana Yaffe and pianist John Yaffe. Artistic Director, Yuval Waldman.

presented by YIVO

When WW II erupted, Max Weinreich was caught in western Europe. He was faced with a terrible choice: return home to YIVO's heart in an uncertain Vilna or come to its periphery in far-off New York City. His personal conflict mirrored the contest between YIVO's European and American branches over where the institute's center should lie and, implicitly, that of secular Yiddish culture and Ashkenazic Jewry as a whole.

presented by YIVO

Hannah Pressman, New York University.

How does Yiddish both enable and complicate the remembrance of things past? Surveying Hebrew autobiographical writing of the mid- to-late 20th century, this talk highlights various authors' contrasting motivations for weaving mame-loshn into their confessional tales. Like the religious discourse dominating these works, Yiddish is a key component to the writers' challenge to the normative model advocated by secular Hebrew culture. The literary self-portraits discussed in this talk, viewed through the critical lenses of language and gender, offer a fascinating alternative vision of modern Israeli selfhood.

presented by YIVO

The third annual program in memory of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter. Prof. Eugene Orenstein of McGill University spoke on the topic, "Ber Borokhov: A Revolutionary of Yiddish Philology." Prof. Joshua (Shikl) Fishman spoke about Dr. Schaechter; music was by Janet Leuchter and Lauren Brody.

PLEASE NOTE: This program is entirely in Yiddish.

presented by YIVO

Title: Jesters, actors, troubadors - the myth of the genesis of Yiddish theater

Speaker: Zehavit Stern, University of California, Berkeley

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

What Should be the Relationship Holocaust Studies and Jewish Studies?

Speaker: Cecile E. Kuznitz, Bard College

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Agnieszka Oleszak, University College, London.

Beys Ya'akov was a network of religious schools for girls in prewar Poland first established by Sarah Schenirer in 1917. In 1919, Beys Ya'akov was taken over by Agudas Israel, which proved to be a turning point in the school's development. Its rapid growth made it a popular and successful educational institution among Orthodox Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. This presentation aimed to reconstruct the early history of Beys Ya'akov and to illustrate the process of legitimizing the idea of institutionalized religious education for Jewish girls.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Natan Meir, Portland State University. How do we reconstruct the history of those who were unable to write their own stories? This lecture explored the lives and experiences of Jews at the margins of society-including poor orphans and widows and the physically and mentally disabled-in 19th- and early 20th-century Eastern Europe. This "history from the margins" attempts to move us towards a richer and fuller portrait of East European Jewish society than ever before.

presented by YIVO

Kinderland - Yiddish textbooks and the concept of home and homeland

Evita Wiecki, University of Duesseldorf

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

"In Jacob's Cane, Elisa New has created a breathtaking exploration of her 'roots' - a detective story written with the lyrical heart of a poet and an historian's keen eye for detail. It is an extraordinary journey through five generations of an American family, told with the dramatic sweep of a great novel." - Andrea Mitchell, NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Elisa New is professor of English and American literature and language at Harvard University. She is the author of The Line's Eye and The Regenerate Lyric. She lives with her husband, economist Larry Summers, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

presented by CJH, LBI and YIVO

Co-sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum of New York, Consulate General of Romania and Ukrainian Institute of America

Czernowitz-"Vienna of the East"-is the site of two different powerful memories. To some, it was home to an assimilationist Austro-German Jewish culture; to others, it was a hub for the creation of modern Yiddish language and culture. A panel of historians and writers, including Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, the authors of a new volume entitled Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory;Susannah Heschel, scholar of modern Judaism, descendant of rabbinic families from the Czernowitz region; Norman Manea, Romanian-born writer and professor of European studies and culture; Boris Sandler, editor of the Yiddish Forverts and author and producer of a new documentary film Glimpses of Yiddish Czernowitz; and Atina Grossmann, scholar of modern German and European history, discussed and debated the reconciliation of these two different memories within the broader history of Jewish emancipation, assimilation and resistance in Eastern Europe.

presented by YIVO

Jeffrey Herf, eminent historian and a professor at the University of Maryland, discusses his new book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press), a detailed account of how Hitler's Germany planted the seeds of its own brand of virulent anti-Semitism in the Middle East.

presented by YIVO

YIVO co-sponsored a memorial event for Avrom Sutzkever's shloyshim (one-month anniversary of his death) together with the Congress for Jewish Culture, the Forward, the Workmen's Circle, and CYCO. Participants included Professor David Fishman, Professor Benjamin Harshav, Barbara Harshav, Boris Sandler, Khayim Wolfe, and others. The program includes lectures, recitations of poetry, a musical performance, and recordings of Sutzkever reading from his works.

The program is in Yiddish and English; most of the talks are in Yiddish followed by English translations.

presented by YIVO

Raz Segal of Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, situated the Holocaust in Subcarpathian Rus' in the multiethnic context of the region during the interwar period and WWII.

presented by YIVO

This is the first concert in a new series devoted to rarely heard masterworks from the Sidney Krum Jewish Music and Yiddish Theater Memorial Collections at YIVO, performed by gifted young artists from The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music and other premier conservatories in the metropolitan New York area. The inaugural concert features works by Sergei Prokofiev (Overture on Hebrew Themes), Ernest Bloch ("Nigun" from his Baal Shem Suite), Joachim Stutchewsky (Kinah), Leo Zeitlin (Reb Nakhman's Nigun) and Joel Engel (The Dibbuk Suite for solo piano).

presented by YIVO

Dr. Darius Staliunas, Deputy Director, Lithuanian Institute of History, discussed how Lithuanian politicians tried to build relations with Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, how relations developed after WWI and more.

presented by AJS and CJH

This event consisted of a structured discussion among four distinguished panelists: Dr. Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Visiting Professor of History and Literature at Bard College; Dr. Nina Goodman, Coordinator of Academic Support at the Abraham Joshua Heschel Lower School; Dr. Felicia Herman, Executive Director of the Natan Fund; and Dr. Jacob Wisse, Director of the Yeshiva University Museum and Associate Professor of Art History at Stern College. Careers outside of Academia was moderated by Dr. Rona Sheramy, Executive Director of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Over the course of the session, the panelists discussed job opportunities in the non-profit world, including foundations, academic publishing, Jewish education, archives, and museums. They also discussed how best to seek and apply for non-academic positions, as well as how to maintain a research agenda.

presented by AJHS, CJH, and YUM

This conference examined the legacy of Raphael Lemkin, lawyer, scholar, teacher, linguist, writer and tireless advocate of international efforts to prevent genocide; bringing together speakers from Ireland, Bosnia, Australia, and North America to assess and review the impact of Lemkin's work in light of new research and world events.

For more information visit the conference website.

presented by YIVO

Marking the culmination of three years of intensive work on the Milstein Family Jewish Communal Archive Project, this conference celebrated the history of Jewish life in the New York area, emphasized the achievements of Jewish communal organizations, and highlighted the treasures of Jewish archives. The program featured a discussion by New York Jewish community leaders of agencies which collaborated in the Milstein Project and papers by scholars on a wide variety of political, social and cultural issues. A panel of professional archivists discussed the rich resources found in local Jewish archives and the challenges faced in their preservation for the future.

Presented by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the Educational Alliance, F.E.G.S Health and Human Services System, NYANA and Surprise Lake Camp

presented by AJS and CJH

Preparing for the Job Market is a structured discussion among three distinguished panelists: Dr. Judith Hauptman from the Talmud and Rabbinics Department at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. Yael Zerubavel from the Jewish Studies and History Departments at Rutgers University, and Dr. Hartley Lachter from the Religion Studies Department at Muhlenberg College. The panel is moderated by Dr. Jeffrey Shandler, professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University. Over the course of the session, the panelists address the hiring process from both sides of the table: providing tips on how best to present oneself to an academic search panel as well as a "behind-the-scenes" look at how different academic departments approach the hiring process. The panelists also address the vital elements of an academic job application, from cover letters and CVs to in-person interviews, from the perspectives of their varied institutions and departments.

presented by YIVO

With author, Jack Jacobs.

presented by YIVO

Killing Kasztner, a documentary on a World War II Zionist operative who remains controversial more than 50 years after his assassination in Israel.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Joanna Lisek, University of Wrocław

presented by YIVO

Dr. Hannah Kliger, Pennsylvania State University, Abington College spoke on findings from her research showing the contribution of new methodologies for studying communication about trauma within Holocaust survivor families, to provide a more balanced profile of survivors, their children, and grandchildren. This study, based on the research of the Transcending Trauma Project, offers a more integrated view of how the trauma of the Holocaust can be an opportunity for transmitting resilience.

presented by YIVO

With Gur Alroey (University of Haifa), Frank Caestecker (University of Ghent) and moderated by Hasia Diner (New York University).

Presented by YIVO and the City of Antwerp

presented by YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research sponsored the third EPYC Educators Seminar on East European Jewish Heritage, June 22-25, at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Eligible participants in the Educators Seminar included teachers from various settings, such as Jewish high schools, colleges, public schools and private schools, museums and afternoon religious schools, as well as graduate students in education and Jewish studies.

The Seminar's chairman was Dr. Robert Moses Shapiro, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College. Co-chairing was Dr. Paul Glasser, Associate Dean of the Max Weinreich Center at the YIVO Institute. Seminar lecturers included professors Robert Seltzer of Hunter College, Samuel D. Kassow of Trinity College, Miriam Hoffman of Columbia University, Nancy Sinkoff of Rutgers University, Chava Lapin of Queens College and YIVO, film director Joshua Waletzky, Folksbiene artistic director Zalmen Mlotek, and others.

presented by YIVO

Rachel Rojanski, Associate Professor, Department of Jewish History, University of Haifa.

presented by YIVO

(The Treasures of Nahum Stutchkoff: Yiddish Radio Scripts in the New York Public Library)

Amanda (Miryem-Khaye) Seigel, Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Ellen Kellman - Assistant Professor in Yiddish Language and Literature, Brandeis University

The role of serialized fiction in the American Yiddish press was the subject of rancorous debate from its beginnings. Critics lambasted socialist-oriented papers for printing romance novels instead of serious fiction in translation. Yet some works, such as the Russian novel Sanin, proved to be even more controversial than those originally written in Yiddish.

presented by YIVO

Eléonore Biezunski, University of Paris X, Nanterre

Biezunski presents the process of her innovative research connecting geography with the study of Yiddish songs, exploring New York City as an experienced and represented Jewish place.

presented by YIVO

The League for Yiddish and YIVO Institute invite you to listen to a program in memory of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter z"l. David Fishman of the Jewish Theological Seminary speaks on the topic, "The Problem of Religion and Secularism among Secular Yiddishists: A Historical Analysis." Rukhl Schaechter of the Forverts and daughter of Dr. Mordkhe Schaecter speaks on "My Father's Secularism and Tradition." Musical program by Michael Alpert.(Program is in Yiddish.)

presented by YIVO

Dr. Elissa Bemporad, Eugene Lang College/The New School. Explores how Soviet Jewish identity in the late 1930s was shaped by the knowledge of what was happening to Jews in fascist Poland and Nazi Germany, and on the other hand by the absence of official anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

presented by YIVO

Boris Sandler with an introduction by Gennady Estraikh.

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Yedida Kanfer, Department of Russian History, Yale University. In the years before WWI, the industrial city of Lodz was a center of Jewish religion in Russian Poland. Kanfer explores the link between Lodz and religious infrastructure, between industry and Orthodox politics.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Max Kohn, psychoanalyst, journalist and author

What is the secret of Jewish humor? Freud thinks that jokes must be distinguished from humor. A joke requires that someone is listening, but humor is a conflict between the ego and the superego. Through humor, the ego can be stronger than the superego. Max Kohn will present examples from his new book, Vitsn: mots d'esprit yiddish et inconscient (Limoges: Lambert-Lucas, 2008).

presented by YIVO

Dr. Max Kohn, psychoanalyst, journalist, and author

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Rachel Rojanski
University of Haifa

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Magdalena Ruta, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University of Crakow

presented by YIVO

Magda Ruta
Jagiellonian University of Cracow

This is a Yiddish language event.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Gabriel Finder, Lecturer in Modern Jewish History, University of Virginia

presented by YIVO

On the occasion of the publication of the full translation of The History of the Yiddish Language. Panelists include Neil G. Jacobs, Ohio State University; Robert D. King, University of Texas; and Kalman Weiser, York University.

presented by YIVO

Dr. Roland Gruschka- Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

In 1931, the Soviet literary critic Avrom Vevyorke (1887–1935) published the book Revision, in which he made an attempt to rehabilitate the most controversial writer of pulp fiction in Yiddish, Shomer (Nokhem Meir Shaykevitsh, 1849–1905), giving rise to a fierce dispute in Soviet Yiddish literary scholarship about the significance of his work for the emerging "proletarian literature." The arguments of both sides in this dispute can only be understood in the context of Soviet literary policy.

presented by YIVO

Symposium on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Czernowitz Yiddish Conference

With Cecile Kuznitz (Bard College) and Jess Olson (Yeshiva University). Moderated by Paul Glasser (YIVO).

presented by YIVO

Keynote Address: Bernard-Henri Levy, Philosopher, Journalist, Author
Moderated by Paul Berman, writer in residence, New York University

After the Exile, Jews did not experience sovereignty for thousands of years until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Levy brings his formidable intellect to the questions: Why does the new Jewish sovereignty rattle many Gentiles? Why does it rattle many Jews?

presented by LBI

Edited by Professor Marion Kaplan
German (C.H. Beck Verlag, 2003), English (Oxford University Press, 2005), and Hebrew (The Zalman Shazar Center, 2008)

This book portrays the drama of German-Jewish history by examining the everyday lives of ordinary Jews. It traces the gradual ascent of Jews scattered throughout Germany, in rural areas as well as in more urban ghettos, from impoverished outcasts to comfortable bourgeois citizens, and their dramatic descent during the Nazi era. Using a wide variety of original sources, the authors focus on the qualitative aspects of ordinary life – emotions, impressions, and perceptions that provide insights easily overlooked in more traditional studies.

The program presented lectures by the contributing authors:

Steven Lowenstein, University of Judaism, Los Angeles, Changes in the Jewish Family in Germany 1780-1870.

Marion Kaplan, New York University, Friendship on the Margins: Social Relations between Jews and other Germans in Imperial Germany.

Trude Maurer, Universität Göttingen, Germany, Interactions between Jews and non-Jews in Weimar and Nazi Germany.

presented by AJHS, CJH, LBI, and YIVO

Dr. Atina Grossmann discussed the story of the "close encounters" in Allied occupied Germany between Jewish survivors of the Nazi Final Solution who found themselves on "cursed German soil" after the German surrender, and the defeated Germans with whom they continually interacted.

presented by YIVO

Winston Churchill was a pivotal figure in modern Jewish history, particularly in his relation to Zionism. Like the great statesmen of the 19th century - Disraeli and Palmerston, for example - Churchill was immensely stirred by the idea of the Jewish return to Palestine. Still, he contrived the excision of Trans-Jordan from Palestine and did very little to curtail the British ban on Jewish migration to Palestine after the White Paper of 1939. Nonetheless, the Jews were one of Churchill's great romances in a very romantic life.

This evening featured a presentation by Michael Makovsky (Foreign Policy Director, Bipartisan Policy Center, Washington, DC, Harvard University, Ph.D., Diplomatic History) about the clarity and ambiguity of Churchill's relationship to Jews and Zionism. This was followed by a discussion of the topic with Sir Harold Evans (Editor, The Times (London, 1981-1982); The Sunday Times (London, 1967-1981)), and the audience.

presented by YIVO

Benjamin Harshav, J & H Blaustein Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Yale University, author of Language in the Time of Revolution and The Moscow Yiddish Theatre: Art on Stage in the Time of Revolution, explored the complex relation of Yiddish and Hebrew in the 19th century Russian Empire. Jewish majorities were found in towns and shtetlakh of the vast territories, where 98% of Jewry declard Yiddish as their language. This was the time that entailed the total transformation of the Jews their languages, professions, education, and their place in general history. It was also the time when the base was laid for the emergence of a new Hebrew society which founded the state of Israel 60 years ago.

presented by YIVO

A celebration of the publication of the YIVO Encyclopedia. Chaired by editor-in-chief Gershon Hundert, with novelist Allegra Goodman, historians Marsha Rozenblit (University of Maryland) and Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth), and librarian Edward Kasinec (New York Public Library), who presented their initial impressions of the work.

presented by YIVO

While certain topics such as Hasidism and Jewish Haskalah have been dealt with extensively by scholars, there has been relatively little discussion of the varieties of rabbinic, intellectual and artistic activity. We examined these activities in three panels, in which the invited scholars engaged in animated discussion.

Co-sponsored by the Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

presented by YIVO and AJHS

An evening with two distinguished intellectuals as they discuss their passion for and the American Jewish experience with basketball.

Alan Dershowitz, a member of the Brooklyn Talmudic Academy basketball team, developed a deep love for the sport. An ardent fan of the Boston Celtics, he was a friend of the late Red Auberbach, the team’s legendary head coach, son of immigrants from Minsk and a Brooklyn high school player. Over the many years of their friendship, Dershowitz and Auberbach shared reflections and nostalgic stories. Jeffrey Gurock, American Jewish historian and athlete, is the author of Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports (2005) and for over 25 years, has been Yeshiva University’s assistant men's basketball coach.

These two well-known scholars shared their common passion, the popularity of basketball among Jewish men and women, and why basketball is a metaphor for larger issues relating to the Jewish experience in America.

presented by YIVO

Prior to their first concert at YIVO, The Klezmatics engaged in a lively and in-depth discussion with the audience about their creative process. Later in the evening, The Klezmatics performed their irresistible, eclectic, and provocative music embracing klezmer and blending multi-cultural sounds drawn from YIVO's Max and Frieda Weinstein Sound Archives.

Seen in this video are (l-r): Lorin Sklamberg, Richie Barshay (special guest), Lisa Grant, Matt Darriau, Frank London.

presented by YIVO

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, has understandably generated an enormous response in the Jewish community. This evening’s response provides a rigorous focus on two issues - the long history of the debate over Jewish power and the role of AIPAC and other members of the Israel lobby in American foreign policy and military policy. The program featured a panel discussion moderated by Nicholas Lemann, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

presented by YIVO

Speaker: Jeffrey Grossman, Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia

This lecture explores the ways in which the work of several poets affiliated with the "Di Yunge" responded to Heine. It argues that the poets of "Di Yunge" were drawn to Heine not for his expressions of "Weltschmerz, sweet melancholy, and sentimental love for all mankind" (Sol Liptzin), but rather for the complexity and irony with which Heine explored those and other emotional states in his poetry.

presented by YIVO

Who Will Write Our History? (Indiana University Press : 2007) - the new monograph by Samuel D. Kassow, the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, which tells the gripping story of Emanuel Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the surreptitious preservation of Jewish documents to resist Nazi oppression.

A panel discussion with Professor Kassow and Robert Shapiro, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College and author of Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum : 2006) explored the historical significance of ghetto archives in occupied Poland and the relationship between Emanuel Ringelblum, Isaiah Trunk and the YIVO. Joanna Michlic, Associate Professor and The Helene and Allen Apter Chair in Holocaust and Ethical Values at Lehigh University, discussed the recent turn of historians toward Jewish testimonies, in particular the publications of the testimonies from the Ringelblum Archives.

presented by AJHS and CJH

Jewish Lawyers in the Civil Rights Movement – part of Jews and Justice, the longest running program series at the Center for Jewish History – featured a blue ribbon panel that explored the Jewish community's involvement in this important historical movement in the United States.

Panelists included:
Jack Greenberg, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., Professor of Law at Columbia University
Mr. Greenberg has been at the forefront of many of the landmark civil-rights cases of the 20th century, including serving as co-counsel with Thurgood Marshall in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. He succeeded Mr. Marshall as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, a position he held until in 1984.

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
During his 30-year tenure as Director of the RAC, Rabbi Saperstein has advocated on a broad range of social justice issues emphasizing civil rights concerns. For over two decades, he has served on the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and has been the only Jewish member of the National Board of the NAACP

Anne Roiphe, an American Jewish journalist and author
Ms. Roiphe writes about many issues – including civil rights and Jewish relations with other communities, their collaborations and their struggles.

Jews and Justice is made possible by the David Berg foundation.

presented by LBI

Marta Eggerth was a child prodigy and remains a wonder of the 21st century. She was already one of the most popular stars of operetta movies in Germany and Austria when she made a film with the dashing singer and actor, Jan Kiepura. They fell in love, were married, and were welcomed through out Europe as a dazzling pair. After the Nazis came to power Marta’s Jewish extraction became an issue, leading them to emigrate to the United States. All these years later, Ms. Eggerth has not lost her voice, her glamour, or her popularity. Still singing to sold-out audiences. Leo Baeck Institute is delighted to host this concert for Ms. Eggerth.

presented by YIVO

A People and Community of Faith; a Unique Coincidence of Nation and Religion

Considered one of America's pre-eminent political thinkers, Michael Walzer will offer new insights into age-old, provocative questions. How does being both affect how Jews describe and define themselves to themselves and others? In the diaspora and Israel, are the descriptions different? Given the new realities of the 21st century, what difficulties arise from these differences?

presented by YIVO

Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish, and Literary Editor, The New Republic; Daniel Mendelsohn, author of THE LOST: A Search for Six Of Six Million, and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, Bard College.

For the first time last fall, Leon Wieseltier travelled to the remains of his parents' towns in Galicia. As it happens, Daniel Mendelsohn's family, also largely destroyed in the Holocaust, came from a town only a short distance away. These two distinguished Galicianers will discuss the torments and the exhilarations of their pilgrimages to the past, and compare notes on the ruins of their common origins.

Please Note: Only Simulcast Seats are available for this event. All Auditorium Seating is completely SOLD OUT. The Simulcast Seats will be set up outside of the auditorium and you will be able to view the lecture live via video feed in its entirety on a large screen. These tickets will be discounted at $10 for adults/seniors and $5 for students.

presented by YUM and ASF

Placing Jewish ethics above all debates between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’, he drew wider global attention to classic rabbinic text, restoring it to its rightful place among the greatest achievements of human thought. Speakers: Richard Bernstein (The New School), Richard A. Cohen (University of North Carolina), Judith Friedlander (CUNY Grad Center), Warren Zeev Harvey (Hebrew University), Solomon Malka, (CUNY Graduate Center), Michael Smith (Berry College.)

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This centennial program was made possible through the support of the Gisella Levi Cahnman Seminar Fund and was co-presented by The Levinas Ethical Legacy Foundation in collaboration with the Association pour la Célébration du Centenaire d’Emmanuel Levinas (France) and the Centre Raïssa et Emmanuel Levinas, the American Sephardi Federation and the Yeshiva University Museum.

presented by LBI and YIVO

YIVO, LBI and The Freud Archives invited an outstanding group of academics and psychoanalysts to consider Freud in the context of his upbringing, including the bourgeouis culture of Vienna in the early 20th century, the anti-Semitism of central Europe, and the overall anxiety of his time.

presented by ASF

After the success of "The Rabbi's Cat", Joann Sfar's new book, "Klezmer", explores the odds and ends of the Eastern European side of his family. "Klezmer" is profane, messy, and wildly enthusiastic, much like the music itself. It’s the story of Noah, who narrowly escapes the massacre of his bandmates by rival musicians, and goes on to put together a new band with some yeshiva students exiled for theft. Also in the tale is his voluptuous love interest, Chava and Tshokola, a less than truthful gypsy on the run from Cossacks. Mr. Sfar is interviewed by David Shasha, Director of the Center for Jewish Heritage.

presented by YIVO

A one-day symposium presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research dedicated to exploring the historical reasons, and current implications, of what many scholars consider the most notorious and repercussive excommunication in all of Jewish history: the banishment of Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza from the Jewish Community of Amsterdam in 1656.

This program was made possible in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

presented by YIVO

For centuries, Jews have been associated with capitalism and particularly with finance. The association has been both positive - a story of over-achievement in the face of discrimination - and negative - a source of fuel for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power. Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University, Professor, Harvard Business School, is the author of The House of Rothschild and the forthcoming Warburg, as well as The Cash Nexus and, most recently, The War of the World which have dealt more generally with questions of money and power. Professor Ferguson is well placed to offer some new thoughts on an old and often vexed question.

presented by YIVO

What are the moral limitations and challenges to fighting a war on terror? What are consequences of the enemy attacking one set of civilians and, by disguising itself within its own civilian population, completely obliterating the distinction between combatants and non-combatants? What can be learned, both morally and strategically, from ordinary war that is applicable to this very different condition? Moshe Halbertal, Professor of Philosophy, Hebrew University and Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute, will examine the approach adopted by the Israeli defense forces in facing these challenges, and the lessons that can be drawn -- perhaps, for the United States -- from this approach.

presented by YIVO

With Franklin Foer, Editor, The New Republic; J.J. Goldberg, Editor in Chief, The Forward; Clyde Haberman, Columnist, "NYC", The New York Times; William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard; and others. Moderated by David Margolick, Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair.

In the wake of events in the Middle East, explore with some of the most influential American Jewish journalists provocative questions. How do Jewish journalists respond to news with a Jewish interest? What are the pulls and tugs on them? Are Jewish journalists afraid/comfortable with stories with a Jewish angle? At one time "all" Jewish journalists were considered liberal. Is this so today? How does this impact their perspective on "Jewish" news?

presented by YIVO

This was a lecture prepared especially for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research by the renowned psychologist and cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, author of six books including The Blank Slate, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction. A recently publicized study claims that Ashkenazi Jews have been biologically selected for high intelligence and tend to suffer genetic diseases as a by-product. Steven Pinker discussed this claim in the context of current debates on nature, nurture, intelligence and race.

presented by YIVO

This historic and groundbreaking multi-disciplinary national conference, presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, explored the distinctive history of Jews in medicine and their roles and responsibilities today. Some of the nation's most outstanding experts in medicine and related fields examined these issues.

presented by CJH

Diane Samuels, a Pittsburgh-based artist, believes that her mosaic Luminous Manuscript serves as a metaphoric table of contents and preface to the Center as a whole. Her artwork contains 80,500 pieces of glass and 440 underlying stone tiles. The tiles include 112,640 individual alphabet characters from 57 writing systems, collected from the handwriting samples of over 500 members of the Center for Jewish History's community. Samuels chose the distinctive graphic layout of a page from the Talmud on which alphabetic characters signify the infinite possibilities of language available through the combination and recombination of signs and symbols. The artist's work of enormous complexity and astonishing beauty puts Jewish history into a true artistic form, a sort of metaphor for the myriad possibilities of interpreting the signs and symbols of human communication to honor history and memory, and create many new meanings.

presented by ASF

On March 31st the Consul General of Turkey in New York and the American Sephardi Federation in collaboration with the Jewish Community of Turkey and The Assembly of Turkish American Associations presented an evening of Sephardi history in the Ottoman Empire. Aron Rodrigue, Stanford University, and Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies spoke about the history and culture of the Sephardi Jews of the Ottoman Empire, the arrival of sephardim in Ottoman lands, their place in Ottoman society, the evolution of their communities, and their socio-cultural transformation in the modern period. Vivian B. Mann, Morris & Eva Field Chair in Judaica at the Jewish Museum in New York spoke about clothing worn on ceremonial occasions and its afterlife.

presented by LBI

Mr. Rostow is General Counsel and Senior Policy Adviser to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In that capacity he is constantly being asked why, in the aftermath of Nuremberg, has the United States refused to participate in the International Criminal Court which, unlike the International Court of Justice at the Hague, can bring individuals, and not just nations, to justice. What makes the United States so reluctant to join a court that is supported by so many other nations?

presented by AJHS

A symposium discussion of the religious perspectives of Catholic and Jewish standards by which 'Just and Unjust Wars are Distinguished' took place at the Center for Jewish History. This event was moderated by Joseph Becker, Vice Chair of the CJH Board of Directors, and featured an exchange of ideas between Father Drew Christiansen, S.J. the associate editor of America Magazine; Darrell Cole, professor of religion at Drew University; and Suzanne Last Stone, professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

presented by AJHS

Religion, Responsibilities and Relations: Responses to Mel Gibson's The Passion, has raised serious issues in the Jewish, Christian, academic and artistic communities. Speakers include, Professor Paula Fredriksen, the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University and author of the article, Mad Mel: The Gospel According to Gibson featured in The New Republic; Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, convener of the scholars' commission to study the screenplay of The Passion and consultant on Jewish-Christian relations; Sister Mary Boys, the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary and Dr. Deal W. Hudson, Publisher, Crisis Magazine, Washington, D.C.

presented by AJHS

A panel discussion featuring Tony Kushner, Samuel G. Freedman and Helen Freedman. Joseph Berger moderated this discussion. Joseph Berger, New York Times reporter, and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust. Tony Kushner is the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Angels in America. In addition to his work in the theater, he is author of numerous essays on topics ranging from bigotry, to war, to faith, and to love, as well as tackling such contemporary topics as AIDS and gay rights. Samuel G. Freedman, A former reporter for the New York Times, and author of four acclaimed books, his most recent Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. He is a tenured professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Helen Epstein is a former journalist, and author of five books of literary non-fiction, the most recent being Where She Came From: A DaughterÂ’s Search for Her Mother's History. She is on the faculty at of the Prague Summer Seminars and affiliated with Harvard University and Brandeis University.

presented by AJHS

A conversation, "Parallel Lives: Growing Up Black and Jewish in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950s," a commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Taking part in the celebration are two authors from the Delta region of Mississippi Clifton Taulbert and Eugene Dattel.

presented by LBI

Richard Sonnenfeldt, chief interpreter and youngest member of the American prosecution team at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, has just completed an extraordinary memoir. Beginning with his escape from Nazi Germany at age 15 to his schooling in England, his deportation to Australia, and his arrival in New York via Bombay, South Africa, and Cuba, this is an amazing story. Mr. Sonnenfeldt spoke to all defendants and most key witnesses in the Nuremburg Trials. As chief of the interpretation section, he had conversations with everyone from Hermann Goering to Hitler's secretary. Returning to America after the war, Mr. Sonnenfeldt studied electric engineering at John Hopkins University. He became a principal developer of color television, computer and space electronics, and received 35 U.S. patents.

presented by YIVO

A series of panel discussions in response to the swift and chilling rise of anti-Semitism in the West, particularly in Europe. This conference sought to elucidate the causes of the recent hatred shown towards Jewish people. Moderators: Martin Peretz, The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic and Leon Botstein. Over 30 leading scholars, authors and journalists from North America, Israel and Europe participated in panel discussions.

presented by AJHS

A dialogue between Rabbi William Berkowitz and co-Editor of CBS News 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace at the Center for Jewish History.

presented by AJHS

A dialogue between Rabbi William Berkowitz and renowned author Elie Wiesel. In freewheeling interviews, Rabbi Berkowitz poses questions that have not been seen or reviewed by his guests before the event. He probed Elie Wiesel's views on recent topics such as Anti-Semitic attacks, the latest headlines on Israel and the Palestinians and life in the 21st-Century post-Holocaust period.

presented by AJHS

This program explored distinctive concerns for justice arising from Judaism and its history and traditions, and considered whether those concerns have special implications for the work of Jewish lawyers.

presented by CJH

Renowned Brazilian vocalist, Fortuna performed a series songs in Ladino; or Djudeo Espanyol as it is also often referred. Fortuna’s strong and melodious voice unravels colors and stories from the most genuine Sephardic tradition. The repertoire she selected for this concert will showcase popular Sephardic ballads and liturgical chants.

presented by AJHS

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, famed sex therapist, was the guest of Rabbi William Berkowitz, as part of the Dialogue Forum Series.

presented by AJHS

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg was the guest of Rabbi William Berkowitz, as part of the Dialogue Forum Series.

presented by AJHS

Shimon Peres, Israel's Foreign Minister and a major figure in the Israeli government for half a century, was the guest of Rabbi William Berkowitz, as part of the Dialogue Forum Series, presented in association with the American Jewish Historical Society, at the Center for Jewish History.

presented by CJH

Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, State Staff Chaplain of the New York Army National Guard; Rabbi Alvin Kass, New York City Police Chaplain; and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, New York City Fire Department Chaplain, gathered at the Center for Jewish History, to reflect on the year that has passed, the tragedy that was, and the future that may be.

presented by AJHS

Aharon Barak, President of the Supreme Court of Israel, spoke on Israel as a Jewish and a Democratic State, before a sold-out house at the Center for Jewish History.

presented by CJH

Dr. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, was the keynote speaker at the Opening Gala. Dr. Botstein paid tribute to the vision and tenacity that spearheaded the creation of the Center for Jewish History, and then spoke about the Center's importance to the Jewish and wider world.