YIVO (Yiddish:ייִוואָ,pronounced[jɪˈvɔ], short forייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט,yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, 'Jewish scientific institute') is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughoutEastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well asorthography,lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Established in 1925 in Wilno in theSecond Polish Republic (nowVilnius,Lithuania) as theYiddish Scientific Institute (Yiddish:ייִדישער וויסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט,romanized: Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut,pronounced[ˈjɪdɪʃɛrˈvɪsn̩ʃaftlɛχɛrɪnstɪˈtʊt];[1] the wordyidisher means both "Yiddish" and "Jewish").
Its English name becameInstitute for Jewish Research after its relocation to New York City, but it is still known mainly by its Yiddish acronym. YIVO is now a partner of theCenter for Jewish History, and serves as thede facto recognizedlanguage regulator of the Yiddish language in the secular world. The YIVO system is commonly taught in universities and known asklal shprakh (Yiddish:כּלל־שפּראַך,lit. 'standard language') and sometimes "YIVO Yiddish" (Yiddish:ייִוואָ־ייִדיש).
YIVO preserves manuscripts, rare books, diaries, and other Yiddish sources. The YIVO Library in New York contains over 385,000 volumes[1] dating from as early as the 16th century.[1][2] Approximately 40,000 volumes are in Yiddish, making the YIVO Library the largest collection of Yiddish-language works in the world.[3] The YIVO archives hold over 23,000,000 documents, photographs, recordings, posters, films, and other artifacts.[1] Together, they comprise the world's largest collection of materials related to the history and culture of Central andEast European Jewry and theAmerican Jewish immigrant experience.[1] The archives and library collections include works in twelve major languages,[4] includingEnglish,French,German,Hebrew,Russian,Polish, andJudaeo-Spanish.[4]
YIVO also functions as a publisher of Yiddish-language books and of periodicals includingYIVO Bleter[5] (founded 1931),Yedies Fun YIVO (founded 1929), andYidishe Shprakh (founded 1941). It is also responsible for English-language publications such as theYIVO Annual of Jewish Social Studies (founded 1946).
YIVO was founded at aBerlin conference in 1925, but headquartered in Vilnius, a city with a large Jewish population in theSecond Polish Republic. The early YIVO also had branches inBerlin,Warsaw and New York City. Over the next decade, smaller groups arose in many of the other countries withAshkenazi populations.
YIVO operated a graduate training program from 1934 to 1940, known as theAspirantur. Named afterZemach Shabad, YIVO's chairman, the program held classes and guided students in conducting original research in the field of Jewish studies. Many of the students' projects were sociological in nature (reflecting the involvement ofMax Weinreich) and gathered information on contemporary Jewish life in the Vilna region.[9]
TheNazi advance into Eastern Europe caused YIVO to move its operations to New York City. A second important center, known as the Fundacion IWO, was established inBuenos Aires, Argentina.[10] 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.[11] The organization's new headquarters were established in New York City in 1940. A portion of the Vilna archives was ransacked by the Nazis and sent to Frankfurt to become the basis ofan antisemitic department of the Nazis' planned university. The U.S. Army recovered these documents in 1946 and sent them to YIVO in New York.[12]
YIVO directorJonathan Brent established the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project in 2014. With the help of the Lithuanian government, the project aimed to preserve and digitize over 1.5 million documents and approximately 12,200 books, representing 500 years of Jewish history in Eastern Europe and Russia.[14]
In addition to New York City and Buenos Aires, the Chicago YIVO Society is a third center active today.[15]
YIVO has undertaken many major scholarly publication projects, the most recent beingThe YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, published in March 2008 in cooperation with Yale University Press.[16] Under the leadership of editor-in-chiefGershon David Hundert, professor of history and of Jewish Studies atMcGill University inMontreal, 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 theUral Mountains, from which more than 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the United States between 1870 and 1920.
Other YIVO publications of historic significance include:
Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People (1946) —Max Weinreich’s influential study documenting how German academics enabled and justified Nazi antisemitic policies.
College Yiddish: An Introduction to the Yiddish Language and to Jewish Life and Culture (1949) —Uriel Weinreich’s foundational Yiddish textbook linking language instruction with Jewish cultural history.
Der Oytser fun der Yidisher Shprakh (1950) —Nahum Stutchkoff's Yiddish thesaurus, edited by Max Weinreich.
The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States (1961) — YIVO’s historical study, edited byElias Tcherikower, examining the development of Jewish labor activism in America.
Modern English-Yiddish / Yiddish-English Dictionary (1968/2012) — A Yiddish dictionary created byUriel Weinreich and published posthumously.
History of the Yiddish Language (1973; Published in English 1980 and 2008) —Max Weinreich’s monumental study of the origins and development of Yiddish, published posthumously.
Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust (1977) —Lucjan Dobroszycki andBarbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s landmark visual history of prewar Polish Jewish life, based on extensive archival photographs.
A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (1988) —Zvi Gitelman’s historical overview of Jewish life in Russia and the USSR, published in cooperation with YIVO .
Yiddish Folktales (1997) — Beatrice Weinreich’s anthology of Yiddish folk stories, compiled and published in cooperation with the YIVO Institute.
The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944 (2002) —Herman Kruk’s ghetto diary edited byBenjamin Harshav, a major first-person historical source on the Holocaust preserved by YIVO.
Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust (2002) — Jeffrey Shandler’s edited collection of prewar youth autobiographies drawn from YIVO’s autobiographical essay competitions.
My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants (2006) — Edited and translated by Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer, this volume presents autobiographies submitted to YIVO’s 1942 immigrant essay contest, published in conjunction with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
New York and the American Jewish Communal Experience (2013) — Proceedings of the Milstein Conference, published by YIVO, examining Jewish communal life in New York.
YIVO and its collections have been the subject of many memoirs, reference works, and scholarly studies:
From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947 (1989) — Memoir byLucy S. Dawidowicz recounting her experiences during the Holocaust, including interactions with YIVO .
The Yiddish Catalog and Authority File of the YIVO Library (1990) — Reference work by Zachary M. Baker and Bella Hass Weinberg detailing YIVO Library’s cataloging and authority files for Yiddish materials.
Guide to the YIVO Archives (1998) — Comprehensive guide by Fruma Mohrer and Marek Web to the holdings of the YIVO archives.
Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland (2003) — Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman’s study of Jewish folklorists in Poland, including analysis of their connections to YIVO’s mission and collections.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research: A Brief Encounter with Archives (2005) — A richly illustrated selection of materials from YIVO's archives edited by Krysia Fisher.
YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (2014) — Cecile Esther Kuznitz examines YIVO’s role in shaping modern Jewish culture through scholarship and community engagement.
The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (2017) — David E. Fishman’s history of thePaper Brigade inVilna, recounting how YIVO scholars and activists rescued books and archival materials from Nazi destruction.
Saving Yiddish: Yiddish Studies and the Language Sciences in America, 1940–1970 (2019) — Alec Leyzer Burko’s dissertation on the development of Yiddish studies in the U.S., with attention to YIVO’s linguistic scholarship.
Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum (2024) — Jeffrey Shandler explores Jewish museum culture and collections with a focus on YIVO in New York City in the post-war era.
100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2025) — A curated selection of objects from YIVO’s collections, highlighting the institute’s collecting initiatives and holdings; edited by Stefanie Halpern and designed by Alix Brandwein.
YIVO’s archives, library, and institutional legacy have inspired or directly contributed to a wide range of films and other cultural projects:
Image Before My Eyes (1981) – A photographic exhibition and later film documenting Jewish life in prewar Poland using photographs from YIVO’s collections.[17][18]
Partisans of Vilna (1986) – Documentary directed by Josh Waletzky including archival interviews and footage from the Vilna Ghetto; YIVO’s archival material appears in the film’s historical narrative.[19]
Yentl (1983) – The film lists YIVO Institute for Jewish Research as a “Technical Consultant” in the credits.Barbara Streisand explained, "it was not meant to be a documentary on a shtetl, although everything in the film is authentic, everything was researched, everything was checked through the YIVO Institute of Research..."[20]
Defiance (2008) – While not produced by YIVO, the institute holdsTuvia Bielski’s handwritten Yiddish memoir; Bielski is a central figure in the film about the Bielski partisans.[21]
Letters to Afar (2013) – Video-art installation byPéter Forgács (with music byThe Klezmatics), commissioned by YIVO and others, built from home-movie footage in YIVO’s archival collections.[22][23]
No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank’s Story (2015) – Documentary based onOtto Frank’s correspondence fromHIAS case files held in YIVO’s archives.[24][25]
From Bowery to Broadway: New York’s Yiddish Theater (2016) – YIVO co-presented this major exhibition at theMuseum of the City of New York, exploring Yiddish theatrical life and its influence on American culture.[26]
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (2025) – A chamber opera byAlex Weiser (composer) and Ben Kaplan (librettist) premiered by YIVO; dramatizes YIVO’s postwar lexicographical efforts.[27][28]
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