August 7: YIVO

Nokhum Shtif, a linguist, writer and philologist, founded the Yiddish Scientific Institute (Yidisher Visenshaftlikher Institut), known as YIVO, at a Berlin conference on this date in 1925. Co-founded by Max Weinreich and Elias Tcherikover, YIVO was headquartered in Vilna, with branches in Berlin, Warsaw, and New York. Tcherikover headed the historical research section; Leibush Lehrer headed an education section; Jacob Leshchinsky headed a section of economists and demographers; and Weinreich headed a language and literature section. YIVO concerned itself with the language and culture of Eastern European Jews and developed an archive that today has over 24 million documents, photographs, sound recordings, posters, films, videotapes, and other items , including over 750 memorial books from Jewish communities in Poland and neighboring countries. In fleeing the Nazi onslaught and transplanting to New York in 1940, YIVO became the world’s key player in the preservation of the Yiddish language and of Eastern European Jewish culture.

‘We Jews have always known how to respect spiritual values. We preserved our unity through ideas and because of them we have survived to this day. The fact that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai . . . obtained from the conqueror permission to establish the first academy for Jewish knowledge in Yavneh was for me always one of the most significant manifestations in our history.’” —Sigmund Freud, letter to YIVO