New York: "Rebuilding Polish Lithuania 1919-1939," Nov. 8

Are your roots in Poland or Lithuania? Learn about a little-known period when American Jews helped rebuild Polish Lithuania, on Monday, November 8.

The program begins at 3pm, sponsored by The Podbrodz Society at YIVO, at the Center for Jewish History.

Assistant Professor of History Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia University) will speak on "Empire of Charity: American Jews and the Rebuilding of Polish Lithuania, 1919-1939."

From 1919-1939, Jewish emigres in the United States sent millions of dollars to rebuild their former homes throughout Polish Lithuania.

Kobrin's talk will focus on the role Jewish emigres and their philanthropy played in reshaping political, social and economic life in Brisk and Vilna, the two centers of Lithuanian Jewry.

The talk is free, but reservations are required.

Between 1919 and 1939, Jewish émigrés in the United States sent millions of dollars to rebuild their former homes scattered throughout Polish Lithuania. This talk focuses on the role Jewish émigrés and their philanthropy played in reshaping political, social, and economic life in Brisk and Vilna, the two historic intellectual centers of Lithuanian Jewry.

While the stated goal of Jewish émigré generosity was to relieve economic distress, it often caused a reshaping of Jews' understanding of their place in the new nation-states of Eastern Europe during this era of political and economic upheaval.

New York: Center for Jewish History expands hours

The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan holds excellent resources and books for family history researchers.

From Sunday, June 6, access will be even better as the Lillian Goldman Reading Room and the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open six days a week enabling more people to use it. Sunday hours will be from 11am-4pm and all electronic resources and reference collections will be available.

The center is at 15 West 16th Street, New York City.

CJH also holds the archival and library collections of American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute and the library of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. These resources will be available on Sundays upon request.

To request Sunday access, apply by 5pm on the prior Thursday. Click here to learn more or become a registered user. Search for the materials to request; click the "Reserve" link (left side of record item). Fill out the fields and the request will be processed. If you have a problem in regard to materials or a request, send an email or call 212-294-8301.

The CJH is also open Mondays, 9.30am-7.30pm; Tuesdays-Thursdays, 9.30am-5.30pm; and Fridays, 9.30am-1.30pm. YIVO archival collections are available Monday-Thursday, 9.30am-5pm.

For more information, click here.

New York: Jewish Polish tavernkeepers, March 23

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will host a seminar on "Jewish Tavernkeepers and Liquor Traders in 19th century Poland," at the Center of Jewish History on Tuesday, March 23.

Meet the faculty at 6pm; the program begins at 6.30pm. Advance registration is required.

Speakers are:

-- Sarah Lawrence College Professor of Judaic Studies Glenn Dynner, author of "Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (Oxford University Press, 2006). Dynner spoke on that book at the New York 2006 IAJGS conference

-- Bar Ilan University Professor Jewish History Moshe Rosman, who is the Horace Goldsmith Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Yale University.

According to YIVO's description of the event:

By the end of the 18th century, Jews comprised the vast majority of tavernkeepers in Poland-Lithuania, leasing taverns and distilleries from the nobility. According to most historians, Polish Jews were driven out of the liquor trade over the course of the next century.

Yet 19th-century archival sources, including an invaluable collection of personal petitions (kvitlakh) sent to R. Eliyahu Guttmacher, housed in the YIVO Archives, provide evidence of the continued existence of Polish Jewish liquor traders, both open and surreptitious.

The involvement of Jews in this sector of the Polish economy during this later period points to the fact that traces of the feudal economic system survived amidst a period of rapid industrialization and modernization.

While Jewish tavernkeeping was vigorously opposed by powerful groups in Polish society, one crucial group continued to provide them with cover: the very local Christians they were accused of victimizing. This talk analyzes the robust but technically illegal Polish Jewish liquor trade during the 19th century.

Dynner teaches Judaic Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and is author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (Oxford University Press, 2006). He is the latest recipient of the YIVO Workmen's Circle/Dr. Emanuel Patt Visiting Professorship, as well as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. Currently, he is writing a monograph on the subject of Jews in the Polish liquor trade. He is also editor of a forthcoming book on Jewish and Christian mysticism in Eastern Europe. Dynner holds a BA and PhD (Brandeis University), and an MA (McGill University).

Rosman is professor in the Department of Jewish History, Bar Ilan University in Israel and currently serves as the Horace Goldsmith Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Yale University. He has conducted extensive research in Eastern European archives on the social and economic history of the Jews in early modern Poland and specializes in integrating Jewish, Polish, and other sources. His books include "The Lords' Jews: Jews and Magnates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" (Harvard 1990, Polish National Library 2005); "Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov" (University of California 1996, Shazar Center, Jerusalem 2000); and "How Jewish Is Jewish History?" (Littman Library, Oxford 2007). His latest research project is a history of Jewish women in Poland.

The Center for Jewish History is located at 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY.

Latvia: Riga's Jewish community, Sept. 10

Sorry for the last-minute timing of this announcement, but Tracing the Tribe just received the notice.

If your research interests involve Riga, Latvia, this afternoon's event at the YIVO Institute (located at the Center for Jewish Studies) may be good for you.

"Locating Jewishness in Fin-de-siècle Riga: Cultural maps, local politics, and the question of language" begins at 3pm Thursday, September 10, at the CJH. It is co-sponsored by Leo Baeck Institute and the speaker is Felix Heinert.

Heinert will shed light on various issues from his research on Riga's Jewish community. He will negotiate Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish historical and historiographic narratives from their "margins," linking cultural maps (in a metaphorical sense) with local Jewish politics (in a broader sense) and the question of ("imperial" and public) language(s).

Admission is free, but do RSVP to 917-606-8290 or send an email to YIVO.

The Center for Jewish History is located at 15 W. 16th Street in New York City.

New York: Salonika experiences at YIVO, July 12

The YIVO Institute will sponsor, with the American Sephardi Federation, a seminar on Jewish experiences in Salonika through the YIVO Archives, on Sunday, July 12.

Meet the faculty at 3pm; the seminar begins at 3.30pm, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street, New York City.

The Ruth Gay Seminar in Jewish Studies is titled "Uncommon voices, Everyday Lives: Jewish experiences in Salonika through the YIVO Archives."

Pre-registration is required; via email or call 212-294-6143.

Presenter Devin Naar is historian of the YIVO Salonika Project. He is a Stanford University doctoral candidate and writing his dissertation on the Jewish community of Salonika during the 19th-20th centuries.

The Archive of the Jewish Community of Salonika at YIVO was organized, microfilmed and digitized through this project. It was funded by the Maurice Amado Foundation and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The seminar chair is Thessaloniki born-and-raised Dr. Isaac Benmayor, who holds a Ph.d. in Modern Greek Linguistics from Oxford University. He's a past president of the American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece, has worked on a number of publications on the Holocaust in Greece and a Ladino scholar.

Dr. Steven Bowman will offer introductory remarks. He is a University of Cincinnati Judaic studies professor and a Greek Jewry historian.

The Salonika Project's academic advisory committee includes Bowman, Benmayor, Stanford University Professor of Sephardic History Dr. Aron Rodrigue, CUNY Graduate CenterDdirector of Jewish studies Dr. Jane Gerber, Greek Jewry historian and Association of Friends of Greek Jewry president Marcia Hadad Ikonomopoulos, Hebrew University Ladino Professor Dr. David Bunis, Panteion University (Athens) Dr. Rena Molho.

YIVO: Financial problems, staff cuts

According to The Forward, YIVO is dealing with its own financial problems a few weeks after hosting a public discussion on the financial downturn and Bernard Madoff's misdeeds.

Nathaniel Popper reports that five staff members were fired this month, including the only employee who knew how to type and edit documents in Yiddish.

Others dismissed were Fern Kant, who was two-thirds finished archiving Hebrew Actors Union materials; she will leave it uncompleted. Another laid-off employee had been there for decades, pulling material for researchers from the YIVO library.

“He knew the location of every journal and every book in the library,” Kant said. “I can’t imagine the library section functioning without him.”

Three YIVO board members also resigned.

The problems at YIVO, one of the largest libraries and archives of Yiddish material in the world, are connected to the stock market dive, and the drying up of donor funds. But the recent turmoil also stems from financial disagreements among YIVO’s leadership. At a board meeting February 11, a number of members asked the chairman of the board, Bruce Slovin, to resign, accusing him of a conflict of interest.

Fundraising difficulties have highlighted problems in the five organizations forming the Center for Jewish History, which has operated under a deficit for many years. A proposed merger with New York University failed after member groups opposed the plan.

Two other members, the American Jewish Historical Society and the Yeshiva University Museum, are also facing layoffs. Problems have increased because the Center has asked the members to pay increased rent to stay in the building.

The negotiations over this annual rent have been particularly tense at YIVO because the chairman of YIVO, Slovin, is also the founder and chairman of the center. Several members of YIVO’s board have called this a conflict of interest and one of those members, Abramson, said that when the interests of YIVO and the center have conflicted, Slovin has regularly sided with the center against YIVO.

In addition to board tensions, layoffs were necessary because of the recession, and YIVO executive director Carl Rheins said that the generosity and size of gifts by major donors will not be the same.

Read the complete story at the link above.

YIVO: Research Fellowships

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research accepted applications (the deadline is today, May 16) for six research fellowships with the Milstein Family Jewish Communal Archive Project. This three-year pilot project - "New York and the American Jewish Experience" - focuses on preservation and exploration of the Jewish communal archival heritage in the New York region.

Although the deadline has passed, I believe it is valuable to show readers what resources may be coming down the family history road in the future.

Suggested topics - from the 1880s to the present - include but are not limited to these: Jewish migration experience; social welfare and philanthropy in Jewish communal organizations; Americanization and acculturation; culture, intellectual life and the arts; youth education and camping; Jewish life in New York during and after World War II: GIs, DPs, and the organized Jewish community; Jews of New York in the McCarthy period; Jews of New York and the civil rights movement; and studying and preserving archival resources on Jewish life in New York

The project is being carried out by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y, The Educational Alliance, F·E·G·S Health and Human Services System, NYANA [New York Association for New Americans] and Surprise Lake Camp.

The fellowships are funded by the Milstein Family Foundation and the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation, and they were open to faculty, post-doctoral scholars, independent scholars and doctoral students researching the history of Jews in the New York region as well as those researching the general American Jewish Experience with focus on New York.

The Fellows will present papers at a major conference on New York and the American Jewish Experience at the Center for Jewish History in fall 2009. When information is made available on that event, I'll inform readers.