The piano was tuned, the vodka was flowing and world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin posed for photos with noshers and nibblers at the pre-concert reception of the YIVO Institute for Yiddish Research’s 12th Annual Heritage Gala at the Center for Jewish History on May 7. “Just as there is love at first sight, there is…
Wyman Brent may be about the most unlikely person you could find to establish a new Jewish library in the Baltic nation of Lithuania. Brent is neither a scholar nor an intellectual. He doesn’t speak Lithuanian and isn’t even Jewish. He is a wiry, soft-spoken, long-haired atheist from California; the type of man who signs…
Negotiations between Lithuania and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research may be close to re-establishing YIVO’s presence in Vilna 70 years after the Nazis looted and largely destroyed its holdings. But just where those negotiations stand appears unclear following an announcement in the group’s newsletter and a follow-up statement from YIVO’s executive director and CEO,…
A prolific novelist, Philip Roth, at 78, has authored 31 novels and received the most distinguished literary awards, including, most recently, the Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded to him yesterday despite heavy opposition from one of the judges, Carmen Calil. Calil, a feminist author and publisher, criticized Roth’s repetitiveness and resigned from the…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. One hundred years after his birth, the late, great Yiddish novelist and poet Chaim Grade can still draw a crowd. This was evident at an October 4 commemorative evening at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which featured fascinating literary analyses of Grade’s work as well…
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