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

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

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Yiddish Book Center Receives NEH Grant: Wexler Oral History Project Will Significantly Expand Access to Trove of Video Interviews

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Donor Profile: Saul Kurlat

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Learn About In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook

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Decade of Discovery 2021: Yiddish and Social Justice

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Judy Batalion and the Untold Story of Jewish Women Resistance Fighters

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Bertha Kling: Poems

Focus On National Poetry Month

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we're spotlighting selections that speak to the beauty, power, and diversity of Yiddish poetry.

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“Six Lines” in Seven Translations: The Craft of Translating Yiddish Poetry (virtual program): Reading, discussion, and musical performance of Aaron Zeitlin’s poem “Zeks shures” (“Six Lines”)

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Sibir poeme (Yiddish book), By Avrom Sutzkever, with Illustrations by Marc Chagall

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Translating Experimental Yiddish Poet Celia Dropkin (podcast): Translator Faith Jones talks about her published collection of Celia Dropkin's poems and reads some of the verses

אויסגעקליבן

Handpicked Lisa Newman

Lisa is the Yiddish Book Center's director of publishing and public programs. She's chosen her selections to coincide with our 2021 Decade of Discovery theme of Yiddish and Social Justice. "I’m continuing to mine the collections," she tells us, "and learning that there’s so much to discover and consider."

Reading Yiddish Literature in a Time of National Reckoning, A Panel Discussion Moderated by Rachel Rubinstein

This discussion reveals how Yiddish writers grappled with racial injustice in America—taking on slavery, lynching, segregation, and everyday casual racism as literary subjects.

Di yunge—A Group of American-Jewish Literary Rebels

I'm always curious to learn more about the ‘rebels’ of Yiddish literature so I was excited to find this talk in English by Ruth Wisse in our Frances Brandt Online Yiddish Audio Library. The talk is full of rich detail about the writers, their world, and how it all informed their work—and one gets a sense of the how they wrestled with and debated about their writing.

Pogrom Literature and Collective Memory

Former Yiddish Book Center fellow Sarah Quiat's article about Rokhl Faygnberg’s A pinkes fun a toyter shtot (khurbn dubove) (Chronicle of a Dead City: The Destruction of Dubove) recalls a devastating 1919 pogrom in Dubove community. Sarah’s article touches on so many aspects of history, memoir, and collective memory.