WEVD

A conference explores introducing American Jewry to Yiddish culture and literature.

The famous Yiddish-English English-Yiddish dictionary and is significance.

A glimpse of YIVO almost 50 years ago.

A 1968 conference paper contemplates the future of advanced yeshiva studies in America.

And remarks about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

A live recording of a lecture on Yiddish literature delivered at YIVO’s 42nd Annual Conference in 1968.

This second episode, which originally aired on January 19, 1964, features host Sheftl Zak interviewing Reva Mark, daughter of scholar Yudl Mark, about her work collecting materials about American Jewish life in the early 20th century, a joint project between YIVO and the Joint Board of the Cloakmakers Union, and ...

This third episode, which originally aired on April 19, 1964, features host Sheftl Zak interviewing Michael Zylberberg, journalist and YIVO representative in London. Zylberberg, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, discusses Jewish life and Yiddish in London and his work collecting documents and other historical materials. His collection, which deals extensively with Polish and Jewish anti-Nazi resistance, is in the YIVO Archives (Michael Zylberberg, Papers, RG 493).

On Sunday, December 6, 1964 Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter joined host Sheftl Zak to talk about College Yiddish, the textbook first published by YIVO in 1946. By the time of the program, a fourth edition of the book was in the works. Zak talks about which colleges and universities are using ...

On December 27, 1964, host Sheftl Zak answered questions from listeners. Topics included YIVO’s plans for 1965, including projects related to its folklore collections and the upcoming publication of Uriel Weinreich’s Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (the dictionary was first published three years later, in 1968).From 1963-1976, YIVO had its own ...

A paper by Max Weinreich on Ashkanaz, 1100-1300

This broadcast from February 14th, 1965 presents excerpts from the paper, “The Philosophy of the New Jewish Translation of the Torah into English” delivered by Dr. Harry (Tsvi Orlinsky), at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before. Orlinsky was editor in chief of the Torah for The ...

This broadcast from February 21, 1965 presents excerpts from two papers delivered at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before: 1. "Variety of Functions of the Yiddish Adjective," a paper delivered by Professor Uriel Weinreich at a session of the Linguistic Circle, about certain cases of the ...

This broadcast from February 28, 1965 presents excerpts from a paperdelivered at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before. As Yedies reported at the time, Joseph Gar, a student of “the history of the recent catastrophe” (note that this was before the term “Holocaust” came into general ...

In this episode, originally heard on March 7, 1965, YIVOhistorian and archivist Zosa Szajkowski talks about the importance of collecting news of current events: “How what is news today is tomorrow’s history.” Two of the many YIVO archival collections with newspaper clippings and first-hand accounts that he mentions are The ...

Mordkhe Schaechter on the names of trees in Yiddish (YIVO on WEVD, 1967).

What was YIVO up to in 1968?

This episode of YIVO’s program on WEVD was originally broadcast on May 3rd, 1964. Ossip Walinsky (1887-1973), an active trade unionist and Labor Zionist, was born in Grodno (now in Belarus, close to the borders of Lithuania and Poland) and lived in London before immigrating to America. He served on ...

In this broadcast from October 11, 1964, head librarian Dina Abramowicz talks about some of the highlights in the collections of the YIVO Library. The program also includes a discussion about a lunch at YIVO given in honor of a conference at the Leo Baeck Institute.From 1963-1976, YIVO had its ...

In this episode of YIVO’s radio program, Moses (Moyshe) Kligsberg talks about YIVO’s Conference on Jewish Participation in Movements Devoted to the Cause of Social Progress, which took place in Carnegie Hall on September 10-13, 1964. Maida Feingold sings “Zamd un Shtern” (Sand and Stars) and “Brukh Shulman,” two songs ...

Uriel Weinreich, the famed linguist and lexicographer, died young.

Today's episode was originally broadcast on March 24, 1968. Host Luba Condell is joined by Ezekiel Lifschutz for a talk about Abraham Goldfaden (considered the “father of Yiddish theater”). Condell and Lifschutz trace the origins of Yiddish theater in the purim-shpil (Purim play) and its development into full-scale theater productions. ...

YIVO has a long tradition of creating educational resources for all levels of schooling.

Back in 1968, there was a Yiddish course for high school students in New York City.

YIVO has been active for decades in the teaching of Yiddish and the documentation of Yiddish culture.

YIVO’s intensive Yiddish summer program was founded 48 years ago.

Yudel Mark discusses the importance of the Czernowitz Conference, the first international conference devoted to Yiddish.

Abraham Mapu was a seminal figure in the rise of modern Hebrew literature.

What roles did Nazi-appointed Jews play in the death camps?

This episode was originally broadcast on January 21, 1968. Yudel Mark, the editor of the journal Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish Language) discusses the importance to Jewish history of the 1908 Czernowitz Conference, the first international conference devoted to Yiddish. 1968 marked the 60th anniversary of the event.From 1963-1976, YIVO had its ...

A look at the Educational Alliance records in the YIVO Archives.

Exekiel Lifschutz discusses the life and work of historian Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891).

Shmuel Lapin discusses Yiddish in contemporary life (1967).

Nachman Blumenthal on role of Jewish police in the ghettos (YIVO on WEVD, 1967).

The role of the Judenrat in the Holocaust.

In this episode from January 8, 1967, Dr. Arieh Tartakower, sociologist and chairman of the Israeli Division of the World Jewish Congress and president of the World Hebrew Confederation delivers a speech on the differences between Hebrew and Yiddish culture, during a visit to YIVO on December 27, 1966:"We are ...

This episode, originally broadcast on May 22, 1966, features Dr. Shimshon Tapuach of the Department of Agriculture, Jewish Agency, Tel Aviv. By then an Israeli, Dr. Tapuach (whose last name, fittingly enough, means “apple” in Hebrew), spent part of his early academic career at YIVO in Vilna in the 1930s, ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on May 15, 1966, Zosa Szajkowski joins host Sheftl Zak to talk about the exhibition “Jewish Mass Settlement in the United States” that he had curated and which had just opened in the YIVO exhibition hall.From 1963-1976, YIVO had its own program on WEVD, the ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on February 13, 1966, Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter talks about a course in standardized Yiddish orthography recently offered by YIVO. Host Sheftl Zak talks about a class for public school teachers entitled “One Hundred Years of Yiddish Literature” that is about to begin and about the ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on November 28, 1965, Dr. Marvin (Mikhl) Herzog interviews Dr. Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg on Western Yiddish. Recorded examples of native speakers of Western Yiddish are featured, with the discussion in English. Among Guggenheim-Grunberg’s publications are "Horse Dealers' Language of the Swiss Jews in Endingen and Lengnau" ...

In this episode of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD, YIVO Chief Archivist Ezekiel Lifshutz joins host Sheftl Zak to talk about YIVO’s collection of American Jewish autobiographies,collected during the course of a 1942essay contest on the theme “Why I left Europe and what I have accomplished in America.” Lifschutz had ...

This episode was originally broadcast on November 7, 1965. Host Sheftl Zak provides some facts about Yiddish in America that he thinks will be of particular interest to two types of listeners: people using the textbook College Yiddish to learn the language and people who have written in to YIVO ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on October 17, 1965, Zosa Szajkowski joins Sheftl Zak to talk about a YIVO exhibition on Yiddish orthography that was presented in conjunction with a class by Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter on the same subject. The scope of the exhibition reached as far back as the ...

A scholar talks about the YIVO autobiographies as a research resource (1965).

This episode of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD, originally broadcast on October 3, 1965, is devoted to an interview with Dr. Jacob Robinson about his book, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight; The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe, a rebuttal to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on ...

In this episode, originally broadcast on April 9, 1965, Hannah Fryshdorf comes into the studio to talk about YIVO’s worldwide reach. Over her long career, Fryshdorf rose to be the Assistant Director of YIVO. Her personal papers can be found in the YIVO archives (RG 1243). She first talks about ...

On this episode of YIVO’s radio program, originally aired on April 25, 1965, Yiddish and Hebrew writer, bibliographer, lexicographer, and journalist Moshe Starkman talks about important Yiddish writers and how YIVO in Vilna was influential in documenting and helping their careers. Today, Moshe Starkman's papers can be found in the ...

This episode of YIVO’s radio program on WEVD was originally broadcast on April 18th, 1965. To commemorate the uprising in Warsaw Ghetto that took place on the first night of Passover in 1943, host Sheftl Zak talks about artifacts donated to the YIVO archives. Using I.L. Peretz’s short story “Dray ...