Past Events

Join us for a panel discussion with Paul Berman, Cecile Kuznitz, and Richard Wolin, moderated by Jonathan Brent, YIVO’s Executive Director, as we consider the diverse responses to the emergence of Fascism throughout the 20th century—and on into the present.

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, violinist and champion of Jewish music Yuval Waldman will play a recital-lecture of works by Jewish composers which he commissioned or gave the premiere performance of.

This talk and round table discussion with author Dr. Walter Zev Feldman and James Loeffler celebrates the recent publication of the first comprehensive study of both the musical structure and the social history of klezmer.

Alyssa Quint explores the fates of the two modern Yiddish theater museums that opened in 1926—the Yiddish Theater Museum in New York and the Esther Rokhl Kaminska Theater Museum in Warsaw.

We want your talent in Yiddish! Join our celebrated hosts, entertainers Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel, and special guests for a fun, intimate night of Yiddish performance.

In Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from the Forward, 42 Yiddish-language stories are translated for the first time. Ezra Glinter, Dara Horn, and the translators read from the stories, give us a taste of the Yiddish originals, and engage in a discussion of the work.

Anthropologist Erica Lehrer discusses Polish-made figurines depicting Jews, a controversial phenomenon with diverse historical precedents and a new popularity today. Located at Fordham School of Law, Lincoln Center Campus.

This talk explores Singer's philosophical and spiritual development through his unpublished essays, depicting a different image than is commonly recognized.

With the occasion of his 80th Anniversary, YIVO organizes a festive celebration of Norman Manea, holocaust survivor and one of the most important contemporary Jewish-Romanian-American writers.

The Great Jewish American Songbook program will offer Jazz interpretations of famous Jewish composers including George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern.

Actively involved with the Ringelblum Archive Publication Project since 2004, Dr. Eleonora Bergman has been working to carry out the wishes and dreams of the creators of the secret Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes Archive – to make the Archive available to the public.

Come celebrate the first English-Yiddish dictionary in nearly fifty years. Now you can say almost anything you want in Yiddish!

A concert featuring new classical works by young and emerging Jewish composers, featuring various combinations of piano, string quartet, and singer. A post-concert conversation with the composers will explore the question of how Jewish history and identity informs the creation of new works of art.  

Many Yiddish writers traveled to Palestine in the first half of the 20th century and published their impression in newspaper articles or books. The encounters of Yiddish writers with the Holy Land and the Zionist Yishuv opens the door to fascinating contemplations on the nature of modern Jewish identity.

This meeting of the 16th Street Book Club’s Reading Women series will discuss Arguing With the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers edited by Rhea Tregebov.

Join us for a survey of the greatest Yiddish literary works written in the late 19th and early 20th century, open to students of all levels.

The blood libel accusation of Jews committing ritual murder has been the basis for some of the most hateful examples of organized antisemitism around the world since its fabrication in the Middle Ages. This conference explores the impact of the blood libel over the centuries in a wide variety of geographic regions with a focus on how cultural memory was created, elaborated, and transmitted.

How did the Jews of Salonica, once known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans, fashion a new identity as Greek Jews after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire?

Where the Jews Aren't explores the previously untold story of Birobidzhan, the Soviet “Jewish Autonomous Region.” Author Masha Gessen will discuss this complex, strange, and heart-wrenching story, and read an excerpt from her new book.

Come hear Jeremy Dauber, author of the first comprehensive biography of Sholem Aleichem, talk about Aleichem's life, his work, and his legacy – and the struggle to encapsulate all of that between two hard covers.

Join us in commemorating the Jewish community of Vilna through poetry, music, and presentation.

Violinist/vocalist/composer Alicia Svigals and accordionist Lauren Brody will perform a program of Yiddish songs old and new and of euphoric klezmer fiddle music, in their first concert reunion since the days of their 1990's all-women band Mikveh.

Some of the most creative pathways in Jewish writing include translations from German into Yiddish and Hebrew, from Hebrew into Yiddish, and from Yiddish into Hebrew and English. Ken Frieden shows the importance of translations, focusing on the Yiddish/Hebrew tales told by Nahman of Bratslav and the German/Yiddish/Hebrew sea narrative Oniya so`ara.

Scholars, librarians, and archivists present on modern Yiddish theater and performance. Participants will assess the newest digital archival resources for research in the field and consider women's experiences.

Miriam Udel considers the recurrent fantasia of a Jew who ascends to a status "more Catholic than the Pope." Dating back to the early modern period in Yiddish (and far earlier in Hebrew), the most persistent instantiation of this fantasy is the narrative of the Catholic pope of Jewish origin.

YIVO and The Forward hosted an enlightening journey to Lithuania and Poland in June of 2016.

In his new book The Last Days of Stalin, Joshua Rubenstein presents a fresh, riveting account of the dictator’s final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, and the unfolding of Soviet and international events that followed.

Two evenings of documentaries depicting the era of the Russian cultural migration and the people who defined it. Presented in collaboration with Russian American Foundation.

In honor of Sholem Aleichem’s hundredth yortsayt, YIVO presents an afternoon of discussion and dramatic performances that will kick off an exhibition of the Sholem Aleichem Family Archive and other related materials from the YIVO Archives.

John Zorn and his ensemble will be featured in the first-ever live performance of music Zorn wrote to accompany the documentary film Sholem Aleichem, Laughing in the Darkness. Drawing on and departing from traditions of Jewish music such as Klezmer, Zorn’s score is filled with lyricism, color, and a keen sense of irony and dark humor.

In this discussion, scholars of Russian Jewry and genocide studies present new research rethinking the legacy of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War.

In this talk, David Slucki traces the development of Holocaust survivor organizations, through which survivors negotiated their understandings of who was a survivor, what was the Holocaust, and how it should be memorialized.

In this presentation, Chantal Ringuet delves into the North American careers and to the works of Yiddish poets Rokhl Korn and Kadia Molodowsky.

“Persona Non Grata” is a Japanese film depicting the life of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara who saved the lives of 6,000 Jewish refugees during World War II by issuing transit visas for them to Japan.

Stanislaw Krajewski discusses what is and what is not presented in the post WWII section of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and why.

In 1908, a group of young musicians—with the encouragement of their teacher, composer Rimsky-Korsakov—organized the Society for Jewish Folk Music to create a modern national style of Jewish concert music. This program highlights their music and follows their journey from Russia to Europe, Palestine, and the United States.

Buenos Aires was once famous for Yiddish theater – crowds would leave the shows past midnight and retire to the Bar Internacional to compare notes until four. In this talk, Amy Kerner suggests a framework for understanding how Yiddish theater traveled from Europe to Buenos Aires and what was new about it after WWII.

This lecture considers the extensive transnational relief networks forged by two border committees of the French Alliance Israélite Universelle: Isaac Rülf’s Memel Committee for Aid to Russian Jews and Isaac Bamberger’s Königsberg Committee.

YIVO sound archivist Lorin Sklamberg provides a window into the Yiddish music recorded in Berlin in 1933-38.

The YIVO Institute is re-launching its NextGen program and we want you to be part of our maiden event. For one night only, The Gefilteria’s innovative co-founders, Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz are bringing the best-selling Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook back to life in an exclusive, all-vegetarian cooking demonstration and tasting.

This powerful and timely documentary inspired by the historian Walter Laqueur explores the causes and consequences of terrorism and anti-Semitism around the globe.

Drawing upon a variety of materials from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and other Center for Jewish History partners, Sonia Gollance discusses the social and literary significance of the mixed-dance trope in Jewish literature and the documentary evidence for this controversial cultural practice.

Based on what is the first cultural history of the immigrant Jewish community in Paris, this talk will discuss the Modern Jewish Culture Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair - a virtually unknown exhibition of global Yiddish culture.

A talk by Professor Moshe Rosman about how contemporary Jewish museums by interpreting history designed to convey a message. Located at Fordham School of Law, Lincoln Center Campus.

Prof. Yitzhak Y. Melamed provides an overview of the Karliner hasidic community’s search for its plundered and lost cultural and musical heritage, with music samples performed by violinist Jonathan Rothman.

This panel discussion on Jews and comedy features comedian Robert Klein, comedy writer Alan Zweibel, artist Drew Friedman, author Kliph Nesteroff, Jewish popular culture scholar Eddy Portnoy, and a special guest. Moderated by comedy writer Frank Santopadre.

Agnieszka Legutko’s course explores the borderlands between memoir, autobiography, and fiction in Jewish life writing through the lens of the East European experience.

In this program, Marc Chagall’s granddaughter Bella Meyer interweaves images of Chagall’s artwork and personal letters to reflect on his life, passion for Yiddish and dedication to perpetuating Jewish heritage and culture. 

Samuel Kassow, YIVO’s Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish History, considers Jewish cultural resistance through literature during the Holocaust. 

Saulius Sužiedėlis examines the history of Lithuania‘s Jews in the 20th century, including the destruction of 90% of the region‘s Jews during the Holocaust.

By way of Bashevis Singer, Yiddish young adult fiction, folklore, and more, Miriam Udel unravels the mystery of our fascination with the idea of the Jewish Pope.

Given Heidegger’s well-documented anti-Semitism, does he still deserve a place in the philosophical canon? Professor Richard Wolin complicates the debate by turning to Heidegger’s Jewish students.

Harvey Klehr explores the factors that drew American Jews to the Communist Party in the 20th century, the atmosphere of suspicion that defined the McCarthy era, and what about the Party ultimately disillusioned many Jews.

Join culture critics, scholars, and museum practitioners to discuss the state of Jewish mu­seums in both Europe and the U.S. and why they matter.

YIVO’s own Jonathan Brent illumines Stalin’s final campaign against the Jews and subsequent death, examining evidence from the KGB and Stalin archives.

Magda Teter looks at the emergence of Jewish history as a discipline against the backdrop of nationalism and national identity in Europe.

Professor Samuel Kassow explains why reportage in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos was so important.