Alumni News

Stuart Schear (ZP ‘75, ‘76, ‘78) served on YIVO’s Board of Directors from 2016 through 2020. He recently retired as Vice President for Communications at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the leading Jewish international development and human rights organization supporting 550 social change organizations in 19 developing countries. Schear pursued Jewish Studies at Oberlin College, with a focus on East European Jewish history, leading him to take graduate-level classes through YIVO’s Max Weinreich Center and conduct research in the YIVO Library.

Miriam Udel (ZP ‘01, ‘07) has won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience for her book, Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press, 2016).

On Monday, December 7th, 2015 Sarah Litvin (ZP '12, '14) taught Yiddish at a special Yiddish-themed comedy show called An Hour Abroad at the Magnet Theater. Among other words, she taught audience members to heckle comedians with "טעם־גן־עדן" if they made a good joke, or "שװאַך" if a bit wasn't up to snuff. 

Since the summer program, Noah Barrera (ZP ‘13, ‘14) has been writing prolifically for the Yiddish Daily Forward as a staff writer. In his reportage, he focuses on L.G.B.T-issues in the Jewish community. By doing so, he hopes to carry on the tradition of the Forverts well into the 21st century! In addition to his work as a reporter, he is now a professional translator. In collaboration with his former professor, Noah is translating a book of over 360 pages about Jewish ethnography and folklore for publication. Above all, he’s noticed that this translation project has significantly improved the way he writes and speaks Yiddish.  

Rose Kaplan-Bomberg (ZP ‘15) plays bass in a Yiddish punk band called קױט פֿאַר דײַן פֿאַרדאַכט [Koyt far Dayn Fardakht] which will perform at Yiddish New York in December 2015. 

Ri J. (Reyze) Turner (ZP '12-'14 and Winter Program '13-'14), began her studies the fall of 2015 in the Interuniversity Master's Program in Yiddish Literature in Israel, with Hebrew University as her home university. So far she is primarily interested in studying hitherto under-researched Yiddish journalism, manuscripts, and letters that reflect the development of Ashkenazi political ideas about Zionism, diaspora identity, and language nationalism. She completed a Master's Degree in the spring of 2015 in Jewish Studies at Hebrew College in Newton, MA, where she wrote her master's thesis on Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Tamares's Yiddish autobiographical essay from 1926 (her translation of which is slated to appear soon, accompanied by the Yiddish original, in the web journal In Geveb). The Yiddishists in Israel constantly ask her, "Fun vanen iz dayn Yiddish?" and she always answers proudly, "Fun YIVO." She received a 2018 Literature Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation from Yiddish of selected humor pieces by Joseph Tunkel, better known by his pen name, Der Tunkeler.

Alice Nakhimovsky (ZP ’06, ‘07) and Roberta Newman (ZP ‘87) won a 2015 National Jewish Book Award for Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America (Indiana University Press, 2014). Roberta Newman was the Director of Digitial Initiatives at YIVO from 2013-2019.

Eddy Portnoy (ZP ‘93) published Bad Rabbi And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017). He is the Senior Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at YIVO. His most recent exhibit is Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis.