YIVO
Encyclopedia
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
(now Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
) as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ), or Yiddish Scientific Institute, is a source for orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
, lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
, and other studies related to the Yiddish language
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
. Although the organization was renamed the Institute for Jewish Research subsequent to its relocation to New York City, it is still primarily known by its original acronym. (The word yidisher means both Yiddish and Jewish.)
Activities
YIVO preserves manuscripts, rare books, and diaries, and other Yiddish sources. The YIVO Library in New York contains over 385,000 volumes dating from as early as the 16th century. The YIVO Archives holds over 24,000,000 documents, photographs, recordings, posters, films, posters, and other artifacts. Together, they comprise the world's largest collection of materials related to the history and culture of Central and East European Jewry and the American Jewish immigrant experience. The Archives and Library collections also hold many works in twelve major languages, including EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Ladino, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
YIVO also functions as a publisher of Yiddish-language books and of periodicals including YIVO Bleter (founded 1931), Yedies Fun YIVO (founded 1929), and Yidishe Shprakh (founded 1941). It is also responsible for such English-language publications as the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Studies (founded 1946).
History
YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguistLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and writer Nochum Shtif
Nochum Shtif
Nohum Shtif penname Baal Dimion , Jewish linguist, publisher, translator and philologist of the Yiddish language.In August 1925 he established the Jewish research institute YIVO....
(1879–1933). He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....
and the "self-hating" assimilationists
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
who adopted Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
or Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
. Other key founders included philologist
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and theater director Max Weinreich
Max Weinreich
Max Weinreich was a linguist, specializing in the Yiddish language, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who edited the Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary.- Biography :Max Weinreich began his studies in a German school in Kuldiga,...
(1894–1969) and historian Elias Tcherikover (1881–1943).
Founded at a conference in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, but headquartered in Wilno
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
– a city in Eastern Poland with largely Jewish population – the early YIVO also had branches in Berlin, Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Over the next decade, smaller groups arose in many of the other countries with Ashkenazic Jewish populations.
In YIVO's first decades, Tcherikover headed the historical research section, which also included Shimon Dubnow, Saul Ginsburg, Abraham Menes, and Jacob Shatzky
Jacob Shatzky
Jacob Shatzky was a distinguished Jewish historian.Shatsky was born in Warsaw. He received a traditional Jewish education and went on to study at universities in Lemberg, Vienna, Berlin and Warsaw. He earned the Ph.D...
; Leibush Lehrer (1887–1964) headed a section including psychologists and educators Abraham Golomb, H. S. Kasdan, and A. A. Roback; Jacob Leshchinsky (1876–1966) headed a section of economists and demographers Ben-Adir, Liebman Hersh, and Moshe Shalit
Moshe Shalit
Moshe Shalit, also Moses, Moyshe, Moishé, Moïsé Salitas [b. December 22, 1885, Vilna, Russia , d. July 19, 1941, Wilno, Poland ], was a researcher, journalist, essayist, ethnographer, and humanist of the inter-war period.Shalit devoted himself to the promotion of Yiddish language and of literature...
; Weinreich's language and literature section included J. L. Cahan, Alexander Harkavy
Alexander Harkavy
Alexander Harkavy was a Russian-born American writer, lexicographer and linguist.Alexander was educated privately, and at an early age evinced a predilection for philology...
, Judah A. Joffe, Selig Kalmanovitch, Shmuel Niger, Noah Prilutzky, and Zalman Reisen.
The Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
advance into Eastern Europe caused YIVO to move its operations to New York, with a second important center established as the Fundacion IWO in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A third active center of activities today is the Chicago YIVO Society.
Part of the YIVO archives and leadership fortuitously survived the war. For their own reasons, the Nazis carried the bulk of YIVO's archives to Berlin, where the papers survived the war intact and eventually ended up in New York, and all four directors of YIVO's research sections were already in the Americas when the war broke out or were able to make their way there.
Publications
YIVO has undertaken many major scholarly publication projects, the most recent being The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeThe YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is a two-volume, English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry in this region, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008.The Encyclopedia, 2,400 pages in...
, published in March 2008 in cooperation with Yale University Press. Under the leadership of editor-in-chief Gershon David Hundert, professor of history and of Jewish Studies at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, this unprecedented reference work systematically represents the history and culture of Eastern European Jews from their first settlement in the region to the present day. More than 1,800 alphabetical entries encompass a vast range of topics including religion, folklore, politics, art, music, theater, language and literature, places, organizations, intellectual movements, and important figures. The two-volume set also features more than 1,000 illustrations and 55 maps. With original contributions from an international team of 450 distinguished scholars, the encyclopedia covers the region between Germany and the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
, from which more than 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the United States between 1870 and 1920.
A new complete English-language edition of Max Weinreich's classic book History of the Yiddish Language in two volumes, edited by Dr. Paul (Hershl) Glasser, has just been published.
A series of volumes of YIVO's Groyser Verterbukh Fun Der Yidisher Shprakh (Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language) appeared over the years—volume 1, 1961; volume 2, 1966; volume 3, 1971; volume 4, 1980. The project, founded in New York, was officially moved to Jerusalem, but seems to have petered out.