YIVO

YIVO, (Yiddish: ייִוואָ), established in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט), or Jewish Scientific Institute (ייִדישער yidisher = Jewish or Yiddish, depending on the context), is a source for orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to the Yiddish language. Though it was later renamed the Institute for Jewish Research, it is almost always known by its original initials, which, in Yiddish, form the acronym "YI-V-O".

Activities

YIVO preserves manuscripts, rare books, and diaries, and other Yiddish sources. The YIVO Library in New York contains over 385,000 volumes dating from as early as the 16th century. The YIVO Archives holds over 24,000,000 documents, photographs, recordings, posters, films, posters, and other artifacts. Together, they comprise the world's largest collection of materials related to the history and culture of Central and East European Jewry and the American Jewish immigrant experience. The Archives and Library collections also hold many works in twelve major languages, including English, French, German, Hebrew, Ladino, Polish, and Russian .

It also functions as a publisher of Yiddish-language books and of periodicals including YIVO Bleter (founded 1931), Yedies Fun YIVO (founded 1929), and Yidishe Shprakh (founded 1941). It is also responsible for such English-language publications as the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Studies (founded 1946).

History

YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguist and writer Nochum Shtif (1879 – 1933). He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists and the "self-hating" assimilationists who adopted Russian or Polish. Other key founders included philologist and theater director Max Weinreich (1894 – 1969) and historian Elias Tcherikover (1881–1943).

Founded at a conference in Berlin, but headquartered in Vilna—a city in Eastern Poland with largely Jewish population, the early YIVO also had branches in Berlin, Warsaw and New York City. Over the next decade, smaller groups arose in many of the other countries with Ashkenazic Jewish populations.

In YIVO's first decades, Tcherikover headed the historical research section, which also included Shimon Dubnow, Saul Ginsburg, Abraham Menes, and Jacob Shatzky; Leibush Lehrer (1887–1964) headed a section including psychologists and educators Abraham Golomb, H. S. Kasdan, and A. A. Roback; Jacob Leshchinsky (1876–1966) headed a section of economists and demographers Ben-Adir, Liebman Hersh, and Moshe Shalit; Weinreich's language and literature section included J. L. Cahan, Alexander Harkavy, Judah A. Joffe, Selig Kalmanovitch, Shmuel Niger, Noah Prilutzky, and Zalman Reisen. [Liptzin, 1972, 130, 133]

The Nazi advance into Eastern Europe caused YIVO to move its operations to New York, with a second important center established as the Fundacion IWO in Buenos Aires, Argentina . A third active center of activities today is The Chicago YIVO Society

Part of the YIVO archives and leadership fortuitously survived the war. For their own reasons, the Nazis carried the bulk of YIVO's archives to Berlin, where the papers survived the war intact and eventually ended up in New York, and all four directors of YIVO's research sections were already in the Americas when the war broke out or were able to make their way there. [Liptzin, 1972, 3, 133]

Publications

YIVO has undertaken many major scholarly publication projects, the most recent being The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, published in March 2008 in cooperation with Yale University Press Under the leadership of editor-in-chief Gershon David Hundert, professor of history and of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal, this unprecedented reference work systematically represents the history and culture of Eastern European Jews from their first settlement in the region to the present day. More than 1,800 alphabetical entries encompass a vast range of topics including religion, folklore, politics, art, music, theater, language and literature, places, organizations, intellectual movements, and important figures. The two-volume set also features more than 1,000 illustrations and 55 maps.

With original contributions from an international team of 450 distinguished scholars , the Encyclopedia covers the region between Germany and the Ural Mountains, from which more than 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the United States between 1870 and 1920.

A new complete English-language edition of Max Weinreich's classic book History of the Yiddish Language Yale University Press, Summer 2008), in two volumes, edited by Dr. Paul (Hershl) Glasser, has just been published

A series of volumes of YIVO's Groyser Verterbukh Fun Der Yidisher Shprakh (Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language) appeared over the years—volume 1, 1961; volume 2, 1966; volume 3, 1971; volume 4, 1980. The project, founded in New York, was officially moved to Jerusalem, but seems to have petered out.

References

• Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.
• Prager, Leonard, " Yiddish Studies in Israel III", Mendele, Vol. 6.277, April 4, 1997

Further reading

• Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From that Place and Time: A Memoir 1938 - 1947. New York: Norton, 1989. ISBN 0-393-02674-4
• Fishman, David E.

Embers Plucked From The Fire: The Rescue of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna (in English and Yiddish). New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1996.

See also

• Academy of the Hebrew Language

External links

• Official site