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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

The Great Synagogue of Brody, Ukraine, pictured on a 1908 postcard. (Public domain)
September 5, 2026, 8:23 am
War-weary Ukrainian students learn Yiddish to reclaim a Jewish past nearly erased at home
Non-Jews learn about region’s history through language study with New York’s YIVO Institute, while connecting with US Jews over national heritage decimated with help of some local collaborators
By Luke Tress
Left, the Psychedelicatessen exhibition poster, 2026. Right, The artist Steve Marcus in his New York City studio, 2018. (Steve Marcus, Sid Kaplan)
July 26, 2026, 3:03 am
‘Rabbinic trips’: NY exhibit blends groovy psychedelic counterculture, Jewish tradition
On display through December at YIVO and the Center for Jewish History, visual artist Steve Marcus’s work brings together influences from Maimonides to the Grateful Dead
By Cathryn J. Prince
Artifacts featuring three early 20th-century Jewish psychics — from left, Terfren Laila, Erik Jan Hanussen and Abraham Hochman — are featured in the YIVO exhibit, 'Jews Are Magic.' (JTA)
May 26, 2026, 4:59 pm
NYC exhibit ‘Jews are Magic’ traces Jewish occultism from palm readers to psychics
Opening today, YIVO display spotlights fortune-tellers, mind-readers, wonder rabbis, and the enduring appeal of the supernatural in moments of social anxiety
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Educator Susannah Trubman walks a group from Hunter College through the YIVO Learning and Media Center, February 11, 2026. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
March 1, 2026, 5:10 pm
As US Jews reckon with antisemitism uptick, a NY institution doubles down on education
Questions abound on whether outreach is worth the investment in today’s climate, but a recently opened center for students at YIVO institute is all-in on sharing pre-Holocaust Jewish life
By Luke Tress
Henry H. Sapoznik, author of 'The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City.' (Audrey Martinovitch)
December 14, 2025, 3:50 am
From Black cantors to kosher health nuts, new book reveals lost histories of Yiddish NYC
Great for Hanukkah, ‘The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City’ by Henry H. Sapoznik is not your usual guidebook. In fact, many of the sites listed in it haven’t existed for decades
By Zack Rothbart
Michael Bennett Lewis's scenic design for 'The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language' features images of the chamber opera's two real-life protagonists: legendary YIVO head Max Weinreich, left, and the linguist Yudel Mark. (Courtesy YIVO via JTA)
September 21, 2025, 6:01 am
At NY’s YIVO, a legendary unfinished Yiddish dictionary gets the last word — as opera
Premiering this week, ‘The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language’ tells the true story of Holocaust survivors and émigré scholars in NYC racing to salvage a civilization
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Chaim Grade’s 'Sons and Daughters' was originally serialized in the 1960s and '70s, in New York–based Yiddish newspapers. (YIVO; Alfred. A. Knopf via JTA)
April 7, 2025, 1:16 am
How Yiddish writer Chaim Grade’s last novel was rescued and wrestled into print
The editors discuss how a previously lost decades-old manuscript was found and pieced together. It’s being called ‘probably the last great Yiddish novel’
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Illustrative: Leaders of the New York-based YIVO open crates of salvaged YIVO treasures from Europe, photographed in New Jersey, 1947. (Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
March 21, 2025, 4:17 pm
Dirty jokes and sacred texts: YIVO marks 100 years of preserving Yiddish culture
Artifacts from 1,000 years of Ashkenazi Jewish life including literary transcripts, Herzl’s diary, everyday notes and children’s scrawls connect prewar Jews with generations to come
By Cathryn J. Prince
Photo of Yitskhok Rudashevski in the 1930s. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, Israel/ Photo Archive and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
July 20, 2024, 7:55 am
Now online, diary of teen shot by Nazis tells of desperation, fear, hope in Vilna Ghetto
In its second web-based exhibition, YIVO makes available the lucid observations of Yitskhok Rudashevski, a 15-year-old made wise beyond his years by a life of oppression
By Cathryn J. Prince
Jeffrey Shandler, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, is the author of 'Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum.' (Etty Lassman; Indiana University Press via JTA)
July 9, 2024, 2:24 am
In the 1940s, Jewish scholars planned a museum about the world they were losing
A new book details how, like the Nova exhibit that was opened amid Oct. 7 fallout, a YIVO collection in NYC sought to commemorate European Jewry even before the Holocaust’s end
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council, with German dictator Adolf Hitler in 1941. (German Federal Archive via Wikimedia Commons)
February 25, 2024, 9:35 am
A New York Yiddish center finds Nazis lurking deep within Hamas’s ideology
Starting Feb. 26, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research sponsors a 3-part webinar with scholars countering the view that October 7 was ‘payback’ for Israel’s rule over the West Bank
By Renee Ghert-Zand
Jonathan Brent, executive director and CEO of YIVO, and Gitanas Nausėda, president of Lithuania, examine holdings in the Strashun Rare Books Room at YIVO's New York headquarters, Sept. 18, 2023 (YIVO: Melanie Einzig via JTA)
September 21, 2023, 1:28 pm
Lithuania president honors those who saved Jewish artifacts during and post-Holocaust
Gitanas Nausėda as guest of honor at small New York ceremony: ‘These acts [of rescue] are without any doubt unique examples of universal human principles to fight the evil’
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi men in Jerusalem, c. 1900. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research via JTA)
September 9, 2023, 10:57 am
NYC exhibit shows Israeli Hebrew didn’t kill Yiddish, it gave it a new nest to live in
‘Palestinian Yiddish: A Look at Yiddish in the Land of Israel Before 1948,’ opens this week, shows how the old language survived in the new Israel – sometimes hiding in plain sight
By Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Chaim Grade and his wife Inna Hecker Grade, shown in the United States in 1978. The two met in Moscow in 1945. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research via JTA)
February 26, 2023, 2:17 am
Writer Chaim Grade’s archive digitized: A Yiddish treasure with a dramatic backstory
YIVO Institute and National Library of Israel make renowned author’s papers available online after they were locked away by his widow for decades, inaccessible to researchers
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
The major characters from the Nickelodeon series 'SpongeBob Square Pants.' (Fair use)
June 14, 2022, 7:28 pm
SpongeBob SquarePants theme song gets Yiddish treatment
Eddy Portnoy, academic adviser and director of exhibitions at the YIVO Institute, gives beloved animated kid show’s theme a new Jewish spin
By Jackie Hajdenberg
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