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Letter from the Yiddish Book Center

07/23/2025 10:30:39 AM

Jul23

Lara Giordano


2025-2026 cohort for the Yiddish Arts & Culture Initiative

Dear LJCC friends and members,

During the last weekend of June, Michael Hennecke and I traveled to Amherst, MA to visit the Yiddish Book Center (YBC) and spend two days workshopping with other recipients of the 2025-2026 Yiddish Arts & Culture Initiative. 

The Yiddish Book Center was founded in 1980 by Aaron Lansky. At the time, Lansky was a graduate student studying Yiddish Literature. As part of his studies, Lansky came to discover that the Yiddish archive was in danger of disappearing because contemporary Jews, unversed in the language of their grandparents, were prone to simply discard these volumes. Lansky organized a nationwide network of book collectors so as to salvage and uplift this material legacy of a thousand years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. 

The Yiddish Book Center now houses more than 1.5 million Yiddish volumes, which come from all over the United States and across the globe - Mexico, Venezuela, South America, South Africa, Australia, Russia, and beyond. The collection is still growing. 
 
The Yiddish Book Center, which sits on a 10-acre parcel of land, was designed by architect Allen Moore. It is reminiscent of the wooden synagogues of Russia and Poland. There is additionally something inward-looking about the building - something reclusive and separate, a sense augmented by the small footbridge across which one must walk to enter -- as if passing from one time and place into an entirely different, almost sacred kind of space.

While the exterior of the building gives the distinct impression of self-containment, one enters to find lain out before and below them an expansive and illuminated space -- a library, the skylighted-ceiling of which is festooned with reproductions of Yiddish posters that hail from a variety of geographical and historical moments; suspended the flags of this archive.

 
Woven into this sun-dappled collection is the main exhibit "Yiddish: a Global Culture." As one wanders the shelves, one is simultaneously drawn into various moments of Yiddishkeit. Composed of text and photos devoted to topics such as "Expanding Horizons" (migration and travel); "Bestsellers: dime novels, romance fiction, worker's libraries"; "Saving a Culture"; "Modernism"; "Soviet Yiddish"; "Women's Voices;" "Press & Politics;" Shraybmashinen! Yiddish typewriters and typists"; and many more -- this exhibit winds throughout the entirety of the main hall.
 
Purportedly the last remaining Yiddish Linotype, this impressive machine was once housed at the Forverts or the Forward, a longtime Yiddish newspaper rooted in leftist and socialist ideas.
 

Beyond the sheer pleasure of occupying this exceptional space both calming and transportive, Michael and I were lucky to engage in learning sessions about the migratory origins of Yiddish and its profundity as an intrinsically bilingual semantic system. Our learning sessions were conducted by Mindl Cohen, the academic director at the YBC, and Rokhl Kafrissen, New York based cultural critic and playwright. Most fascinating to me was Rokhl's presentation of Ashkenazi culture not as essentially assimilative, but rather as amazingly capacious -- able to absorb into itself and creatively take over for its own purposes elements of its host culture. This is an idea of Yiddishkeit not as inevitably doomed to extinction, but as itself a powerful culture medium, strong enough to adapt and regenerate itself on new ground while still preserving its Jewish core.

 
Above: the "Yiddishland" mural: donning the entirety of one wall of the main hall and documenting Ashkenazi culture as it existed throughout the world at various times. Below left to right: Detail of "Yiddishland" ("Summer Camp of Skif, the Bundist Youth Movement" and "Stage Stars, Screen Legends"); incredibly stylist Yiddish typewrite (How do you know it's Yiddish and not Hebrew? Check the upper lefthand corner!)
 
In addition to this examination of the development of Yiddish culture throughout its thousand year history, Michael and I partook of sessions devoted to the practical consideration of each community initiative from our Jewish puppet theater project to Yiddish concerts and learning sessions. Our cohort hailed from across the United States: from the Western cities of Seattle, San Francisco, and LA to the midwest to Brattleboro, VT. Those in attendance represented Jewish art museums and preservation societies, small-town and metropolitan congregations, Federations, community centers, and artists' collectives. The musicians formed an impromptu band for a brief tutorial on Yiddish dance that we shared with the students of the immersive Steiner Yiddish Summer program and serenaded those who partook of an after-hours trip to a local dairy form for ice cream (Michael tried dill pickle flavor!). The workshop ended with a concert from Rikki Rose, the world-famous Yiddish pop star.
 

Michael and I were grateful for our time at the Yiddish Book Center and for the new colleagues and contacts that it brought to us. Thanks to the LJCC board and the entire community for supporting our project. Michael is eager to involve all who care to participate in our Yiddish arts and culture initiative: a Jewish puppet theater. Reach out to me or to Michael for more information about this project or to chat about our time at the YBC.

Yours,
Lara

Sun, August 3 2025 9 Av 5785