Description:

In this talk, Jonathan Brent, CEO and Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (now celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in Vilna, Poland) will discuss the origins and mission of YIVO’s work in discovering, preserving, digitizing and disseminating materials of Eastern European Jewish heritage.  

Having completed work in 2022 on preserving and digitizing some 1.5 million documents of pre-WW II Jewish history and culture known as the Vilna Collection, located in both Vilnius, Lithuania, and New York (since 1947), YIVO is now working with The Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in Kyiv to preserve and digitize an important segment of the legendary Ethnographic Expedition of 1912-1914, led by S. An-sky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport).  

Brent will discuss YIVO’s work in Ukraine, its urgency under present war-time conditions, the importance of this ethnographic and musicological material to Jewish history and heritage, and complex difficulties of such an international partnership today. Brent will show images of materials and discuss the impact and implications of this vast digitization project.

Lunch starts at 12 Noon. The lecture will conclude by 1:50pm.