Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at the YIVO-Bard Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to spend six weeks studying at YIVO in New York City? Join faculty and staff of the Summer Program for a brief information session.

Moderated by Jayashri Wyatt, a panel comprising Elżbieta Ficowska, Mordecai Paldiel, Jay Winter, and Daniel Blatman will discuss how remembrance has evolved over the decades, how stories of rescuers and survivors can be communicated to younger generations, and how to respond to new challenges in Holocaust remembrance.

Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at the YIVO-Bard Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to spend six weeks studying at YIVO in New York City? Join faculty and staff of the Summer Program for a brief information session.

Are you thinking of returning to the Summer Program to continue your advanced studies? Join Summer Program faculty and staff for a brief information session about YIVO’s advanced levels.

Mackenzie Pierce reveals that the Holocaust was a central event within musical culture in Poland and shows why its musical aftermath has been difficult to hear.

Gil Ribak provides a critical revision of the accepted narrative among scholars that the Yiddish press condemned discrimination and prejudice against African Americans, in a discussion led by Devin Randolph.

Join YIVO and League for Yiddish for a celebration of this new publication by Moishele Alfonso, Afn veg: Zibn dertseylungen fun Y.-L. Perets (Pathways: Seven Short Stories by I. L. Peretz).

Samuel Kassow provides an overview of the shtetl by presenting the realities of shtetl life and challenging preexisting and romanticized stereotypes of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

Elżbieta Janicka argues that while Polish cultural institutions do not deny the Holocaust itself, they practice a form of denialism by obscuring the reality of Polish involvement in the Holocaust.

Join YIVO for this concert featuring a variety of chamber and vocal music by Leo Zeitlin, best known for his Eli Zion for cello and orchestra, performed alongside works by composers with whom he was in dialogue. 

This presentation by Dr. Naomi Cohn Zentner and Dr. Abigail Wood examines selichot events in Israel that are by, and for, women.

Through animation and expert commentary, this documentary by Yair Qedar follows Sigmund Freud’s path as a Jewish intellectual in Nazi-era Vienna, witnessing how persecution and exile influenced his groundbreaking theories on the human mind.

This concert honors the voices of those composers, performers, music researchers, and theater artists who were considered “degenerate” and were silenced by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

In this lecture, Elena Hoffenberg draws upon materials held by YIVO to explore how projections about the future in terms of work, culture, and politics guided parents, educational activists, and young people themselves.

Eddy Portnoy elucidates the history of a distinctly American Jewish joke telling phenomenon in which the bulk of a joke is told in English, but the punchline is delivered in Yiddish and explores some of the reasons for the existence of this comedic phenomenon.

This short film by Michael Masarof follows a Jewish Holocaust survivor who is hidden by a Polish couple, coerced into motherhood, separated from her child, and decades later reunited in a fraught encounter that explores survival, trauma, and inherited memory. 

Danielle Padley gives an overview of Leonora Braham’s life on- and off-stage, and describes the reasons for and methods involved in giving her a platform beyond traditional scholarly materials.

This presentation features a book talk by journalist and author Jane Eisner on Carole King: She Made the Earth Move, in which she traces the professional accomplishments and personal challenges of pop icon Carole King, exploring her unique contribution to American music.

By comparing developments in Poland with those in other European countries, this lecture by Jan Grabowski highlights both shared patterns and national specificities in confronting the Holocaust.

Using the YLMC’s Archival Box Lessons, Susannah Trubman leads a guided lesson on the history of the Yiddish theater in Eastern Europe and one of its early pioneers, Esther Rokhl Kaminska.

In this lecture, scholar and performer Walter Zev Feldman explores the vibrant, yet largely concealed, musical culture of the klezmer revitalization in New York, Philadelphia, and other American cities in the 1960s.

Darra Goldstein surveys how Ashkenazi Jews adapted to life in America by adopting unfamiliar ingredients and engaging in debates about nutrition and the importance of domestic traditions, all the while keeping the beloved flavors of the Old Country intact. 

In this lecture demonstration, scholar-musician Jeremiah Lockwood discusses some of the major stars of the cantorial “golden age” in America.

Anna C. Schultz explores sonic translation among the Bene Israel through the metaphor of the echo — a resonant, transformative, relational phenomenon.

Join us for a special concert of Coney Island Days (2022) by Alex Weiser and the New York premiere of Muriel’s Songs (2023) by Eric Chasalow, two song cycles that commemorate the composers’ grandmothers and detail how they navigated 20th century American Jewish life in New York City, opening with Joan Tower’s Petroushskates (1980).

Ronald Robboy explores the idea that George Gershwin’s internalization of Black Americans’ music was influenced by his early immersion in Yiddish theater. 

Join YIVO for a performance of the music of Khantshe in Amerike, a 1912 operetta that touches on topics including love, gender, women's suffrage, and the changing social status of women in turn-of-the-century America. 

Join YIVO for an enlightening journey to Lithuania and Poland. Reclaim your heritage as you examine the life that was lived in these lands. View the remarkable history of old Warsaw, Kraków, Vilnius, and Białowieża.

From the renowned Sarajevo Haggadah to the old Jewish synagogues of the Adriatic coast, from the charming lanes of Osijek to the legendary Old Town of Mostar, this trip will offer a revealing look at the little-known but fascinating history of Jews in the Balkans and their resilience in the face of centuries of conflict and upheaval.

Join YIVO on a journey of discovery across northern Italy, exploring the fascinating, troubled, and glorious history of Italian Jews in the northern tier, unfamiliar to most of us.