Exhibits

Immerse yourself in a lebedike velt, a living world, of fascinating exhibitions about Yiddish culture.

Once@9:53am

This fotonovela exhibit by Ilan Stavans and Marcelo Brodsky is a fictional account that traces the streets of the Buenos Aires Jewish community several hours before a devastating terrorist attack, allowing the visitor to experience first-hand the atrocities and to ponder its labyrinthine twists.

Once@9:53am is on display in the Yiddish Book Center's Brechner Gallery April 29, 2012 - November 4, 2012. Attend an author's talk with Ilan Stavans on Sunday, July 22 at 2 PM: The Buenos Aires Tragedy: A Remembrance

Sholem Bayes

By whatever name -- der yiddisher haym, the Jewish Home Beautiful or, simply, Mom and Dad’s –the home dominates the American Jewish landscape as well as the modern Jewish imagination.  As much an emotional space as a physical one, it figures as a site of continuity as well as rupture, a place to escape to and a place to escape from. The stuff of celebrated novels and memoir, satire and sociology, let alone some of the most enduring moments on the tube and the silver screen, the American Jewish home has been variously sentimentalized and romanticized, anatomized and analysed....

Read the full article by the exhibit's curator, Jenna Weissman Joselit.

The Sholem-bayes exhibit is made possible by a gift from Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg.

Isaac Bashevis Singer and his Artists (closed)

This unique exhibit features more than 80 paintings, drawings, and photographs created by 17 different artists for Isaac Bashevis Singer's (1902-1991) prolific legacy of books and stories. Exhibited artists include Larry Rivers, Maurice Sendak, Raphael Soyer, Roman Vishniac, William Pene Du Bois, Ira Moskowitz, Eric Carle, Leonard Everrett Fisher, Antonio Frasconi, Nonny Hogrogian, Yuri Shulevitz, Irene Lieblich, and Margot Zemach. This exhibit is on loan from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York.

Isaac Bashevis Singer and his Artists is on display in the Yiddish Book Center's Brechner Gallery October 16, 2011 - February 15, 2012. 

View a slide show featuring works from this exhibit.

Bagels & Grits: Exploring Jewish Life in the Deep South (closed)

Bill Aron's photographs explore Jewish life in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, echoing the theme of journey that has been a part of Jewish life for centuries. Jews have journeyed to escape oppression, to seek opportunity, and to preserve their heritage. The journey continues today as the southern Jewish population shift from small towns to metropolitan centers. The southern Jewish experience is about their work places and sacred places, the people that live in the communities, and how their Jewish lives are changing. Each of these areas is explored in the Jewish photographic road trip. This exhibit is on display in the Yiddish Book Center's Brechner Gallery until September 25, 2011.

 

On loan from the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience.

A velt mit veltelekh: The Worlds of Yiddish Culture

A velt mit veltelekh: The Worlds of Yiddish Culture explores the many facets of modern Yiddish language, literature, and culture.

Drawing on the Center’s own collection of one million Yiddish books, the main display, Unquiet Pages, examines the fascinating contents of Yiddish novels, plays, poetry, memoirs, and reportage.  In another gallery, “Sholem-bayes: The American Jewish Home” takes a lively look at how the Jewish home has been depicted in literature and related mediums. The Kinder-vinkl introduces visitors to the origins, sounds, appearance and uses of the Yiddish language. A Yiddish print shop presents traditional printing equipment on which Yiddish newspapers and other common materials were produced.

Unquiet Pages was made possible through a generous grant by the David Berg Foundation.

A Living Connection: Photographs from the An-sky Expeditions, 1912-1914

This exhibition in the Book Center's main repository explores the groundbreaking work of S. An-sky, who, at the turn of the twentieth century, launched the Jewish Ethnographic Expeditions, traveling throughout what is now Ukraine to collect materials about Jewish cultural life.  Photographs are from the Museum of the History of Religion, St. Petersburg, Russia.

 

Mama Loshn: Inspired by Yiddish (closed)

Artist's statement: I am interested in making connections between disparate cultures. Using the Yiddish language, literature, and folklore as a springboard, I have found commonalities between Eastern European Jews, Ancient Egyptians and Chinese Healers. From the first handprints, to alphabet and language, ideas about death and higher powers, healing the body, and games and rituals, distinct civilizations came up with similar explorations and solutions to life’s challenges. - Debra Olin www.debraolin.com
 

Prints by Debra Olin.

Monsters and Miracles: A Journey Through Jewish Picture Books (closed)

A collaboration with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art of Amherst, MA and the Skirball Cultural Center of Los Angeles, CA, this ambitious exhibition was on view at the Yiddish Book Center and The Carle from October 15, 2010 - January 23, 2011.

They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (closed)

This exhibit was on display at the Yiddish Book Center April 18 - September 26, 2010.

This traveling exhibition was organized by the Galicia Jewish Museum, Krakow, and was curated by scholar and folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.