Gal Beckerman, Jonathan Brent, and 92NY's Rabbi David Ingber in Conversation: Preserving History Under Fire
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92NY Recanati-Kaplan Talks
Presented by 92NY; co-sponsored by YIVO In Person at 92NY:Admission: $18 Livestream:Admission: $18 |
What does it mean to preserve history while history is unfolding?
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research recently entered into a contract with the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, to safeguard and digitize some of the world's most significant archives of Eastern European Jewish life. At the heart of this effort are the extraordinary collections of S. An-sky (born Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport), whose landmark ethnographic expeditions at the turn of the 20th century documented the culture, traditions, and daily lives of Jewish communities in the years before they were devastated by war and genocide.
Today, more than a century later, those same archives are once again under threat. As Russia's war against Ukraine continues, the work of preserving these irreplaceable records has taken on new urgency. This past summer, a Russian missile strike damaged the office of Kyrylo Vyslobokov, Director of Archival Information Systems at the Vernadsky Library, a key partner in YIVO's preservation efforts. Although the collections were safely stored elsewhere, the attack offered a stark reminder that the survival of cultural memory can never be taken for granted.
Join YIVO’s Executive Director and CEO Jonathan Brent, The Atlantic’s staff writer Gal Beckerman, and 92NY’s Rabbi David Ingber for a timely conversation following Brent and Beckerman's visit to Kyiv earlier this year. Together, they explore what it means to protect culture in a time of war, why archives matter long before they become history, and how preserving the stories, voices, and artifacts of the past becomes an act of resilience — and, ultimately, of hope.