“Hoops are rolling, one after the other,
From the East, from the North, from the South,
They all come together in YIVO
In the treasury of books and sforim [holy books].”
— Daniel Charney, “Hoops are Rolling” (Also known as the “YIVO March”).
From almost its very inception, YIVO was a global organization. Yiddish speaking communities, inspired by the diaspora nationalism and Yiddishism of YIVO, created local branches across the world, which came to be known as YIVO’s foreign sections. The “YIVO March,” cited above, rang out in Havana, Cuba, in 1953, for example; YIVO branches flourished across North and South America, in South Africa and even in Australia and China. These foreign sections used the techniques that YIVO had pioneered: surveys, autobiography competitions, material collection, and Yiddish historical writing and exhibition curation, to write new histories of immigration and demonstrate the ongoing viability of Yiddish as a language of scholarship. During and after the Holocaust, these branches, swelled by recent refugees from Nazism, turned their expertise towards some of the first exhibitions that commemorated the victims of the Holocaust — and set a program for the reconstruction of Yiddish culture. This lecture by William Pimlott tells the story of how YIVO became a global institution and the new and different stories that YIVO's Friend Societies tell about 20th century Jewish history.
Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture | Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Postdoctoral Fellowship
You may also like the following events from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research:
- Next Sunday, 17th August, 11:00 am, YIVO Learning and Media Center Open House (For Educators) in New York
- Next month, 16th September, 05:00 pm, Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941 in New York, New York
- Next month, 18th September, 07:00 pm, The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language in New York
Also check out other
Exhibitions in Zejtun,
Contests in Zejtun.
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