Support the installation of the Yiddish Book Center's new core exhibition

I am excited to invite you to join me, Aaron Lansky, and other devoted friends of the Yiddish Book Center for the grand opening of our new core exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture, and to let you know how you can help.

Five years in the making, this major installation tells the broader story not just of the books you helped us recover but about the people, places, and events that gave rise to this mighty literature and culture.

Yiddish: A Global Culture will premiere on October 15, 2023, and I hope you will mark this date on your calendar and join us for the celebration. This new exhibition is a product of everything we've done together over the years to preserve Yiddish literature and culture for future generations. As you and so many other committed supporters already know, Yiddish is much more than the books on your parents' or grandparents' shelves or the boxes in their attics and basements. You'll experience Yiddish as a living culture celebrated around the world, from theatergoers in the heyday of New York's Lower East Side to modern productions in Tel Aviv; from classic sounds of Yiddish radio to the contemporary fusion of today's international klezmer bands; or in rediscovered women's voices, brought to life anew by twenty-first century translators.

When you see our exhibition, I know you'll be inspired by the pervasiveness of Yiddish as a vibrant and thriving culture in constant dialogue with the world around it–from Berlin to Buenos Aires, klezmer to Kafka.

The exhibition opens with a specially commissioned 60-foot mural illustrating key moments, personalities, and trends in modern Yiddish culture around the world. Overhead banners will display unique and colorful Yiddish book covers. At the heart of the repository, you'll enter a fully re-created version of legendary Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz's Warsaw apartment, where he once held a weekly salon that nurtured an entire generation of writers. You'll also be able to try your hand at our display of Yiddish typewriter—many of which belonged to celebrated writers, including Yiddish Book Center founder and president Aaron Lansky—and take home a typed message to hang on your fridge or send to a loved one.

Central to the exhibition are the stories of hundreds of the Center's rare books, from detective fiction to modernist poetry, political memoirs, and hand-colored art books. Highlights include fragments of Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer's first-ever work, The Salamander, a literary journal he compiled as a young man in the shtetl of Bilgoray, Poland, and a scrapbook and photograph album created in 1947 by young Yiddish actor Harry Ariel in a displaced persons camp in Austria. A wooden box from 1911 contains handwritten index cards detailing the personal Yiddish library of Samuel Judin, an immigrant tailor in America, miraculously reunited with nine books from his library that were donated separately from Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.

Over more than 40 years, committed supporters of the Yiddish Book Center like you have helped us save those books and many more and open their contents to new generations of readers. Now, with our new exhibition, we want to show visitors displays that draw on a wealth of original research and the latest scholarship, plus the stories that could have been straight out of Hollywood. These stories are not just about the past. The exhibition reflects universal and contemporary themes, including refugees and migration, racial injustice, antisemitism, gender inequality, and more—through the lens of Yiddish.

Along with books and texts, the exhibition includes a trove of unique artifacts donated and loaned from personal archives that are being shown in public for the first time. These include:

• A child's souvenir book of autographs from actors in Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre company when it visited the Boston area in 1939-40.


• An enormous hand-drawn micrographic portrait of Yiddish activist Chaim Zhitlowsky, composed of thousands of miniature letters taken from his selected texts. The portrait was created in Buenos Aires in 1945 by immigrant textile worker and Jewish folk artist Guedale Tenenbaum. This display of a lost masterpiece will be the first time one of Tenenbaum's micrographs has appeared in public.


• A 1940s leather medicine ball owned by the eminent Yiddish novelist and playwright Sholem Asch.


• A gold cigarette case belonging to the matinee idol Michal Michalesco, a headliner from Berlin to Buenos Aires.


• The leather steamer trunk used by the celebrated literary couple Peretz Hirshbein and Esther Shumiatcher on their decade-long travels around the world, which included long spells in China, Tibet, India, Japan, New Zealand, and Soviet Russia. Together with the trunk there is a selection of their vintage clothes, antique souvenirs, and personal items such as an amber necklace, an inkwell, and an embroidered yarmulke.

And this is just a forshpayz—a preview—of the many treasures you'll find.

For the past five years we've been hard at work creating this remarkable experience for our members and anyone else who wants to learn about Yiddish culture. As our dedicated staff will attest, the effort has been rewarding but not easy.

With your support, we've saved more than a million Yiddish books and made them accessible to readers around the world through our digital library, through our education and translation programs, and through our many publications.

Now we're launching the world's first museum of modern Yiddish culture in just a few months, bringing the books to life for generations to come. We’ve received several generous gifts and grants that have helped us reach this point. Now, as we near the finish line, I'm writing to you to ask for your support.

Here's how, once again, you can help:

• For a donation of $25,000 or more, you can be a major funder of Yiddish: A Global Culture. Your name will be included on a sign in the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Hall listing major supporters of the exhibition.


• For $10,000, you can sponsor one of sixteen key display cases situated among the stacks of Yiddish books in the Center's main repository. Each one will feature a unique artifact that tells a distinct story about Jewish history, cultural preservation, and continuity. Of course, we will be pleased to display your name and/or your tribute to a loved one or friend.


• For $7,500 you can underwrite the cost of one of the multimedia installations, with interviews, film clips, or musical selections that make the exhibition a truly immersive Yiddish experience. Again, your name and commemoration will be displayed.


• For $1,000 we'll add your name to a list of exhibition supporters in a special commemorative program for the opening event, as well as on our website.


• For $360 or more, we'll include your name in the Spring 2024 issue of our Kvel newsletter.

Named gifts are appreciated, but whatever you can afford, no matter the size, your contribution will make a lasting difference.

Please note that we're working full-steam-ahead to have everything ready for opening day. In order for your name to appear in the exhibition, your donation and the full text of your commemoration must be received by August 25, 2023. If you would like to discuss a gift designation for the exhibition, please contact Zvi Jankelowitz, Director of Institutional Advancement, at 413-256-4900 x 117 or [email protected].

First you helped us save an entire literature, and your continued support helped us bring it to new generations of readers. Now we want you to be with us as we start a whole new chapter for the Yiddish Book Center with a world class exhibition that will celebrate Yiddish and its global impact and share it with future generations.

I look forward to hearing from you and to welcoming you here to enjoy our new exhibition in person – whether for the opening celebration in October or in the months and years to come!

A sheynem dank – my personal thanks,

Susan Bronson
Executive Director