The Yiddish Book Center building remains closed due to COVID-19. While you can’t visit in person, you can explore all that we have to offer online, and we invite you to join us for weekly virtual public programs, follow us on social media, and sign up to receive our new "Weekly Reader" at yiddishbookcenter.org/signup.

Yiddish Book Center

Regenerating Jewish Culture

Celebrating forty years of book rescue, digitization, translation,
educational programs, oral histories, exhibitions

פֿרישע נײַעס

Now

Read

"Aunt Taibele," By Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, Translated by Miranda Cooper

Learn

Learn About In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook

Watch

Bronx Bohemians, with David Mazower

Join & Support

Donor Profile: Rita Gordonson—A Zamler Honors Her Sister's Memory

View

Yiddish Book Center Presents Free, Weekly Virtual Public Programs—View the Calendar of Events

Listen

Ilan Stavans's The Seventh Heaven

Read

Yiddish Book Center Receives Literary Translation Award from London Book Fair

Decade of Discovery Celebrating Klezmer and New Yiddish Music

Summer usually means Yidstock at the Center, with klezmer and new Yiddish musicians from around the world gathering to celebrate Yiddish and Jewish culture through their music. Of course, this year is a little different, and instead of you coming to us, we’re bringing the sounds and voices of Yidstock directly to you—from a short film on Peter “Klezmer Fats” Sokolow to an interview with Yiddish vocalist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell and pianist/accordionist Dmitri Gaskin, who together create idiosyncratic compositions set to the works of some of the greatest Yiddish poets, to a lively music-themed Yiddish worksheet. Turn up the music, put the falafel on the grill, and enjoy!

Watch

What's the Matter with the Klezmer? The Peter Sokolow Story

Listen

Shmoozing with Anthony Russell and Dmitri Gaskin

Learn

Music Practice: Yiddish Homework

אויסגעקליבן

Handpicked Sophia Shoulson

Sophia Shoulson is an alumna of the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program and a former Yiddish Book Center Fellow; she was also the 2019–2020 Richard S. Herman Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center. Over the past few years, Sophia has unearthed many great finds from our collections. Here are a few of her favorites.

The Yiddish Torah—From the Unquiet Pages Online Exhibit

I'm very excited about the Center's new Unquiet Pages online exhibit, which provides more opportunities to access some of the Yiddish Book Center's resources remotely. The relationship between Yiddish and the Torah is fascinating and particularly rich for someone like me, whose interests have been trending earlier and earlier in the history of the Yiddish language

"Love! Vengeance! Espionage!" Shund Stories Escape a Fire, By Elissa Sperling

When Elissa Sperling recounts the history of a selection of shund (pulp) stories which survived a fire and made their way to our collection, I think she points to a interesting question about the relativity of value. Shund literature was mass-produced cheaply and generally derided by the intelligentsia. Now, it's one of the rarest genres in our collection.

Glückel of Hameln: The Life of an Early Modern Jewish Woman, Teacher Resource Kit

Julie Rezmovic-Tonti and Jessica Kirzane's resource kit provides some excellent background and guidance for reading the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. Glückel's memoirs are a true treasure trove of information about Jewish women's lives in 17th century Europe, which are further enriched by the inclusion of resources such as the excerpt from Zohar Weiman-Kelman's oral history.