These Recordings are too Good to Remain in Our Basement!

In our own basement, stacked on shelves and packed in boxes, are hundreds upon hundreds of unique recordings, spanning the Yiddish Book Center’s entire 37-year history. They include lectures, interviews, concerts, author talks, conference proceedings, and even journal entries recorded in the truck while Aaron Lansky and his young colleagues collected Yiddish books.

Scroll down to see some examples of what we're unearthing, including a rare recording of a talk delivered by Grace Paley, a series of oral histories from 1978-1982 including major Yiddish figures, and yes, we've even found a VHS recording of Jerry Stiller reading "The Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah" at a Yiddish Book Center fundraiser.

These recordings are too good to remain in our basement! Your support will fund our effort to digitize these and other recordings, so that we can make them available for anyone to listen, watch, or download for free. Please, won’t you help by making your tax-deductible contribution online now?

Help Us Put These Tapes Online
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A 2003 benefit for the Yiddish Book Center held at Hebrew College in Newton, MA featured an in-depth conversation between Professor Jay Cantor and the acclaimed writer Grace Paley. This is only one of several Paley appearances captured in our archive.
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In the late-1980s, Aaron Lansky and the Yiddish Book Center received five cassette recordings of oral histories. The tapes feature major Yiddish figures, such as the poet and essayist Sholem Shtern, and the poet and translator Meyer Shtiker.
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In 1996, the legendary Jerry Stiller performed "The Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah," one of Sholem Aleichem's most beloved holiday stories, at a fundraising event for the Yiddish Book Center.
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The Yiddish Book Center's programs on Yiddish culture featured dynamic lectures by leading scholars. These five series of lectures from the 1990s were recorded on cassette and mailed to members - but never transferred to another format.

For your contribution of $54 or more, we’ll send you exclusive access to four extraordinary lectures found in our basement: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s fascinating, first-hand account of her role in creating the new Jewish museum in Warsaw; Samuel Kassow’s impassioned description of the brave men and women who chronicled daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto, and of the year and a half it took to persuade survivors to excavate their buried manuscripts after the War; Timothy Snyder’s case for viewing the Holocaust within a broader context of death and destruction in Eastern Europe; and poet laureate Robert Pinsky on “King David: All Things Above and Below.” We’ll include simple, step-by-step directions so you can listen to the talks on your own smartphone, tablet or computer.

Read Aaron's letter about this project