Help us Launch our Virtual Exhibition

I am writing to ask for your help in creating a virtual version of the Yiddish Book Center’s new permanent exhibition that will enable you and friends around the world to experience the breadth of Yiddish culture right from your home.

Last October, we celebrated the grand opening of Yiddish: A Global Culture. Many of you were there to see this major exhibition, which tells the broader story not just of the books you helped us recover but of the people, places, and events that gave rise to this mighty literature and culture.

This new exhibition is a product of everything we’ve done together over the years to preserve Yiddish literature and culture for future generations, and it was made possible thanks to many generous donors and members like you! As you and so many other committed supporters already know, Yiddish is much more than the books on your parents’ or grandparents’ shelves or in boxes in their attics and basements. Our new permanent exhibition showcases 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; in rediscovered women’s voices; in the stories of Yiddish celebrities; and so much more, from Berlin to Buenos Aires and from klezmer to Kafka.

The response to the exhibition has been astonishing. Just a couple of examples of how visitors have reacted:

“Here in front of me, accessible yet fragile, were treasures of the Yiddish culture I’ve come to care about so deeply. I’ve rarely felt more intimately connected to Yiddishkeit in all its wonder and variety.” —Jennifer Stern, the Forward

“Two words about the new exhibit at Amherst’s Yiddish Book Center, Yiddish: A Global Culture: AMAZING & GO (experience it). It is an extraordinary and inspiring accomplishment. I cannot wait for my next visit.” —Mindy Domb, Massachusetts State Representative

But here’s the challenge: For many of our members and thousands of others, a visit to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA is not possible. And even if you have seen the new exhibition in person, you know that there is more to absorb than is possible in a single visit. So now I am turning to you to help us create a virtual exhibition that anyone, anytime, anywhere will be able to access on their computer, tablet, or even their phone!

And while we can’t replicate the experience of coming to the Yiddish Book Center in person, the virtual exhibition will provide a unique experience—an opportunity to explore Yiddish culture more deeply and, thanks to the beauty of the web, even more intensively and interactively than is possible in person. How will we do this?

Here’s one example. The exhibition opens with a specially commissioned 60-foot mural of Yiddishland illustrating key moments, personalities, and trends in modern Yiddish culture around the world. In person, the mural is big, colorful, and vibrant, providing a snapshot of how Yiddish existed across the globe. The virtual exhibition will integrate each element featured in the mural into an interactive map of the history of Yiddish in different times and places around the globe. We will add new images and links, introducing many of the themes and ideas explored in the exhibit as a whole and offering a true exploration of Yiddish as a global culture.

To illustrate another example: One of the most exciting elements of the exhibition is the Peretz Salon, a fully recreated 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. In the virtual world we’ll provide all of the text and images you would see at the Center, but we’ll be able to add so much more!

On one wall of the Peretz Salon, for example, there are photographs of many writers who were part of Peretz’s circle. Not only will you find all these images and be able to explore and learn more about each writer, but the virtual exhibition will also include the images of dozens more writers who were part of his circle with links to their writings in Yiddish and, where available, in translation. Other features unique to the virtual exhibition will be a gallery of photographs of Peretz’s Warsaw ca. 1890– 1915, drawing on a wide variety of sources such as picture postcards. We also plan to virtually tell the story of the Peretz Mausoleum in the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. Opened with great fanfare in 1925, the mausoleum was a rallying point for Polish Jewry in the post-1945 years and is still a key landmark today, recently restored. The standout surviving sculpture’s creator, Avrom Ostrzego, was killed in the Holocaust. And for anyone who really wants to discover more about Peretz, we’ll provide links to additional content both in the Yiddish Book Center’s collections and in other places.

In yet another example, the theater section of the exhibition contains reproductions of six selected color lantern slides of Yiddish actors captured by studio photographers in the 1890s, drawn from an overall set of forty-five such slides in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. It is a unique and glorious set from the golden age of Yiddish theater in America. While we could only showcase six of the slides in the exhibition at the Center, the virtual exhibition can feature the full set along with biographies for each image as well as related links to other content, such as Yiddish theater sheet music, posters, programs, publicity images, and more.

This is just a forshpayz—a preview. The opportunities are endless. The virtual exhibition will include all of the content from the in-person exhibit and so much more, bringing the magic of Yiddish: A Global Culture to a global audience.

But now I need to talk takhles (practicalities). This project will require our talented staff to spend months preparing new content. The exhibition’s chief curator, David Mazower, will work on every element, researching and rethinking our offerings. Our talented graduate fellows will be charged with identifying images and recordings that provide primary source material related to each story that you can experience with the click of a mouse. Our team will have to obtain permissions for copyrighted materials from around the world. And that’s just for the exhibition content. Our web developer, Amber Kanner Clooney, will work with outside consultants to design the virtual exhibition and create the features needed to present the exhibition in an inviting, engaging, and accessible format online. None of this is easy or inexpensive.

Over more than forty years, committed supporters of the Yiddish Book Center like you have helped us save more than a million Yiddish books and open their contents to new generations of readers. Our new exhibition introduces visitors to a wealth of original research and the latest scholarship, plus stories that seem 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. We want to bring this remarkable story out into the world—Yiddish: A Global Culture will truly go global!

Visitors have been raving about our new permanent exhibition, but, sadly, we recognize that many people are unable to travel to Amherst to experience it in person. This is why our programmatic and curatorial staff have been working tirelessly with our web developers and other technical staff to come up with a compelling and practical plan for a virtual exhibition that will bring this content to eager audiences everywhere on the planet—whether it’s for an introductory taste of the many facets of Yiddish culture around the world or for a deep dive into the digital books, photographs, oral histories, artworks, and other artifacts from within our collection. But we can’t do it without your help!

Will you do your part? 

• For a gift of $25,000, you can become a major funder of the virtual version of our new permanent exhibition, enabling people around the world to experience the rich content of Yiddish: A Global Culture, and you will be listed as a lead donor.
• $10,000 will underwrite a major content section of the virtual exhibition—such as Music, Theater, or Press and Politics—and your generosity will be prominently acknowledged.
• $5,000  will support a fellow’s research on selected artifacts and digital materials to be included in the interactive exhibition displays.
• For a gift of $1,000, we will add your name to the online honor roll of virtual exhibition donors.

I want to assure you that your contribution will make a difference. Thanks to you, we’ve rescued more than a million Yiddish books and opened their contents to the world through our many programs. With the opening of Yiddish: A Global Culture last fall, we launched the world’s first museum of modern Yiddish culture, bringing the books to life for generations to come.

Now we have an opportunity to bring this profound experience to more people than we ever dreamed possible through a state-of-the-art, interactive, virtual exhibition at a time when history, nuance, and understanding of Jewish history is urgently needed. Please, won’t you send your most generous, tax-deductible contribution today, while it’s still on your mind?

A hartsikn dank— my heartfelt thanks,

Susan Bronson
Executive Director