YIVO YIVONEWS Institute for Jewish Research hHuu† • thbxyhyuy uuhxbaTpykgfgr hHshagr u hHuu† pui hshgu, No.200 • Fall 2005 Jews and Medicine Groundbreaking Conference to Take Place in November some of the nation’s outstanding experts in medicine and related fields, including at least one Nobel laureate, who will explore the history of Jews in medicine and their roles and responsibilities today. Topics include medical ethics, the role of women, the attraction of the medical field for Jews and issues related to the boycott of Israeli academi- cians and physicians at international meetings. The confer- ence is expected to be of interest to the general public as well as medical and health professionals. Concurrent with the conference, an exhibition will focus on the subject with artifacts and documents from the ex- tensive YIVO Archives. n the occasion of its 80th anniversary, YIVO is spon- “Since the Talmudic period, a millennium and a half soring an historic conference, “Jews and Medicine — ago, the study of medicine has attracted young Jews OIn the Footsteps of Maimonides: The Jewish Doctor as of a scholarly bent,” noted Dr. Sherwin Nuland, M.D., Healer, Scientist and Intellectual.” The November 6th con- F.A.C.S., of Yale University School of Medicine, a member ference initiated by the Board of Overseers, will feature [continued on page 8] Claims Conference and French Shoah Foundation YIVO Awarded $220,000 for Holocaust Archive he YIVO Archives has been awarded two grants total- ing $220,000 to support major preservation and cata- Tloging efforts. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany is providing $100,000 toward the cre- ation of new microfilms of core collections in the YIVO Holocaust Archive, as well as electronic finding aids. The microfilms are designed to replace existing copies made by YIVO in the 1940s and 1950s, which are now deteriorating. The new finding aids will be available to researchers via Google Internet searches and will be downloadable. In addition, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS) in Paris, founded in 2000 by an order of the French government, is providing 100,000 Euros (equivalent to $120,000) toward the YIVO Holocaust Archive Project. Jewish children who survived the war welcome actress Molly Picon to Le Colonie Scalaire (France, 1946). The grant from the FMS — known in English as the CONTENTS Foundation for the Remembrance of the Holocaust — will Chairman’s Message . .2 YIVO News . .12 serve as a matching grant to that of the Claims Conference. Executive Director . .3 Mission . .14 However, it will be used especially on the microfilming YIVO Donors . .4 Max Weinreich Center .16 and digitization of thousands of documents in the French Development . .5 Library . .18 collections in the YIVO Archives. Those documents will Directors, Overseers . .6, 7 Archives . .22 be linked to electronic finding aids in English and French. Nusakh Vilne . .9 New Accessions . .25 Under the FMS grant, the French-language finding aids will be sent to the Centre de Documentation Juive Encyclopedia . .10 Letters . .29 Contemporaine (Center for the Documentation of Publications . .11 Yiddish Section . .30-36 [continued on page 21] YIVO News From the Chairman of the Board Bright Future Ahead Founded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland, as the Yiddish Scientific Institute and headquartered s I leafed through the traditionally in New York since 1940, YIVO is devoted to proofs for this issue of sung by hus- the history, society and culture of Ashkenazic AYedies/YIVO News, I was struck band to wife at Jewry and to the influence of that culture as it once again by the tremendous the beginning developed in the Americas. Today, YIVO variety and vitality of YIVO’s of Shabes and Bruce Slovin stands as the preeminent center for East work. Our strengths are many “Long Live the European Jewish Studies; Yiddish language, and impressive. At YIVO we can Land of the Free,” both with literature and folklore; and the study of the offer expertise and research as- music by Joseph Rumshinsky American Jewish immigrant experience. sistance on the broadest range of and printed in New York. This Jewish-related topics, thanks to A founding partner of the Center for Jewish “YIVO is a place for History, YIVO holds the following constituent the unique talents of our staff candid intellectual memberships: • American Historical Associa- and volunteers. Our archives exchange and discourse.” tion • American Association of Professors of and library make accessible a Yiddish • Association for Jewish Studies • wonderland of truly irreplace- Association of Jewish Libraries • Council of able items, both the seemingly experience got me thinking Archives and Research Libraries in Jewish quotidian and the one-of-a-kind. about yesterday, today and Studies • Museums Council of New York City If you want to hear a top tomorrow. • Society of American Archivists and • World Ladino scholar discuss the Because YIVO connects the Congress of Jewish Studies. Jewish history of Salonika, world of my father with today, Chairman of the Board: Bruce Slovin listen to five contemporary it is the place to research in Jewish authors talk about their depth almost any aspect of Carl J. Rheins Executive Director: craft, examine a manuscript of Jewish life, history and culture. Director of Development Genesis in the ancient Samaritan It is also a place in which we and External Affairs: Ella Levine script, read autobiographies of can feel the long line of foot- Director of Finance and Jewish immigrants to America, steps in which we follow, as we Administration: Anthony Megino explore the history of Jewish go forward with innovative cooperative communities or plans and ideas. Dean of the Library and Once again YIVO is a place Senior Research Librarian: Brad Sabin Hill understand the importance of food in the Jewish family today, for candid intellectual exchange Chief Archivist: Fruma Mohrer YIVO is the place to be! and discourse. We begin this Head Librarian: Aviva Astrinsky Just the other day I was in year with a great symposium on Associate Dean of the Max Weinreich the stacks of the archives look- November 6, 2005, “Jews and Center/Yiddish Editor: Hershl Glasser ing through the acid-free boxes Medicine — In the Footsteps of containing documents, manu- Maimonides: The Jewish Doctor Editor: Elise L. F. Fischer scripts, letters, photographs, as Healer, Scientist and Intellec- Production Editors: postcards — all pieces of our tual.” This is an opportunity to Jerry Cheslow, Michele Alperin history and culture. In reality, bring outstanding physicians, Contributors: every piece is interesting and ethicists and public intellectuals David Ben-Arie, Jesse Aaron Cohen, Krysia Fisher, related to every other piece, in together with the broadest YIVO Leo Greenbaum, Kathleen Laux, Abraham Lichtenbaum, a vast crazy quilt embodying audience. I hope you will join Yeshaya Metal, Chana Mlotek, Stephanie Newman, Jewish life, history and contem- us at the symposium, but if Lyudmila Sholokhova, Miryam-Khaye Seigel and you cannot, it will be simulcast Lorin Sklamberg porary innovation. It was fasci- nating. online, then archived on our 15 West 16th Street In one set of containers were redesignedwww state-of-the-art.yivo.org web New York, NY 10011-6301 the records of landsmanshaftn site at . Phone: (212) 246-6080 arranged in alphabetical order. When you read this issue of Fax: (212) 292-1892 the YIVO newsletter, I hope you www.yivo.org It touched me to see this docu- e-mail to Yedies: [email protected] mentation — the photographs feel the same way I do: a great and newsletters — of the com- pride in YIVO and a tremen- munal societies formed in dous optimism about the future. YIVO America by people in my We have come so far, working Institute for Jewish Research father’s generation. I also saw and celebrating together. Today hHuu† • thbxyhyuy uuhxbaTpykgfgr hHshagr sheet music — copies of “Eishes and tomorrow — there is such a Chayil” (A Woman of Valor), bright future ahead. 2 YIVO News Fall 2005 From the Executive Director One Measure of Success hroughout YIVO’s recent re- in, prepared by over 430 Jewish An evening panel scheduled for naissance, I have observed and non-Jewish scholars from 16 October 20, at the Center for Tcountless achievements within countries in 11 languages: Eng- Jewish History, will explore the the Institute. Among the most lish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, book’s themes and implications. remarkable is the increase in the Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, A third YIVO work based on number of publications spon- Czech, Slovak, German and original research is the New sored since 1999 — an unprece- French. All non-English articles Anthology of Yiddish Folksongs dented 16 books, more than any will be translated before the by Ruth Rubin, edited by Mark other independent Jewish re- completed manuscript is sent to Slobin and Chana Mlotek (Wayne search institute in the world. the publisher, Yale University State University Press/YIVO, Dr. Carl J. Rheins These have generally fallen in- Press, on October 1, 2006. December 2005). This work rep- to two broad categories: new Between 1992 and 2002, YIVO resents YIVO’s commitment to English-language monographs reprinted two major Yiddish lan- fostering the study of East based on the latest historical, guage classics: the 50th edition European Jewish folklore. social science and humanities of Uriel Weinreich’s classic, Col- The year 2005 also marks the research and the reprinting of lege Yiddish (1999), and The Stan- publication of two new impor- major Yiddish language refer- dard Yiddish Orthography: Rules tant Yiddish-language titles: ence works that are so essential of Yiddish Spelling (6th edition, Mordkhe Schaechter’s Plant for the new generation of schol- 1999). Names in Yiddish: A Handbook of ars working in Yiddish Studies. The pace of publication has Botanical Terminology (which in- In 2002, with Yale University accelerated.