Our Story

About the YIVO-Bard Summer Program 

Founded in 1968 as the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program, the YIVO-Bard Summer Program has served students of Yiddish for nearly 60 years in various locations throughout New York City. At various times linked to Columbia University, New York University, and other academic institutions, the Summer Program has, since 2012, been offered in partnership with Bard College. The YIVO-Bard Summer Program takes place in New York City at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, just blocks from Union Square), where the YIVO Institute has been headquartered since 2000.

About Uriel Weinreich 

Uriel Weinreich, the first child of YIVO founder Max Weinreich, was a prominent linguist who specialized in Yiddish, sociolinguistics, and dialectology. After compiling the groundbreaking Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary, but before its publication, Weinreich died tragically young at the age of forty. 

About our Educational Partnership 

Since 2012, YIVO has partnered with Bard College to make the Weinreich program possible. Essential support from Bard staff and infrastructure allows us to offer students the opportunity to take the program for credit, provides international students with the visas they need to study in the United States, and grants the program the benefit of collaboration with a premier institution of higher learning.