How YIVO pivoted from studying a living Yiddish world to preserving a vanishing culture

A new book by Kalman Weiser, 'Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100,' examines how YIVO adapted after the Holocaust from studying a living Yiddish-speaking world in Eastern Europe to preserving a vanishing culture in America. The book focuses on the transitional years 1940–1970 and the role of founder Max Weinreich.

A new book by Kalman Weiser, 'Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100,' explores how YIVO adapted after the Holocaust from studying a living Yiddish-speaking world in Eastern Europe to preserving a vanishing culture in America. The book focuses on the transitional years 1940–1970, drawing on archives and oral histories. The central figure is Max Weinreich, one of YIVO's founders, who was stranded in Copenhagen in 1939 and eventually reached New York, where he built the American branch into the new center of YIVO. The institute faced a challenge: cultivating a relationship with American Jews who did not share YIVO's valorization of Yiddish. Staff disagreed on the primary mission — some wanted to preserve the world that had disappeared, others insisted on addressing English-speaking generations. YIVO also undertook an extraordinary campaign to recover its collections looted by the Nazis from Vilna, including rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera.