Celebrating 100 Years

Dear Friend,

Imagining the future in the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s Centennial year means recollecting the past 100 years of challenges and accomplishments. Growing to meet the needs of a global Jewish world through our wide array of online resources, YIVO has simultaneously developed new facilities for engaging students, researchers, and the general public in our much-acclaimed Learning and Media Center. As one of the greatest small cultural institutions in the Jewish world, the YIVO Institute’s lectures, conferences, exhibitions, study tours, publications, classes, book discussions, and musical performances transport one from the 15th century to the 21st. YIVO is where the totality of Jewish life in all European and many non-European languages can be found and celebrated.

Today, we are delighted to formally announce YIVO’s $40 million Centennial Campaign, undertaken to sustain YIVO’s ongoing vitality as we develop new programs and ways to serve scholarship and the general public. Thanks to the generosity of our dedicated supporters, we have already raised over $34 million, 85% of our ambitious goal. The comprehensive campaign, which extends through 2026, encompasses three core pillars:

1. PRESERVE OUR ARCHIVES AND INCREASE ACCESSIBILITY:

Digitize and Publicly Share Millions of Archival Materials.

Of the 24 million documents and artifacts that comprise YIVO’s Archives, some 5 million pages are currently available online. And that number continues to increase. In the past year, visitors from around the world accessed our online archives more than 700,000 times. We anticipate attracting even more visitors in the coming years as we embark on the next ambitious project—digitizing our genealogical records—which will draw new audiences in search of their personal histories, further enhancing YIVO’s reach and impact.

2. ENRICH OUR PROGRAMS AND EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS:

Grow the Depth and Breadth of Programming

YIVO enjoys a longstanding collaboration with Bard College, holding two annual courses: the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, and the flagship YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the world’s longest-running Yiddish language intensive. YIVO and Bard are expanding that partnership with plans for new educational endeavors geared to students and educators seeking to deepen their knowledge of Jewish Eastern Europe.

3. GROW OUR INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY:

Further Invest in Infrastructure to Best Serve Our Growing Global Community.

This past spring we held the grand opening of a dedicated facility for the YIVO Learning and Media Center, where visiting groups of high school and college students, educators, and the broader public can explore Jewish history and culture through hands-on exposure to archival primary source materials. Adorned with photographs and objects from YIVO’s history, and artifact displays from our Archives and Library, the new space features an interactive map with hundreds of photos of Jewish life in Eastern European towns and cities, an open-stacks library with Yiddish and English books, multimedia stations for listening to sound recordings and watching videos from the YIVO collections, and a classroom for lessons that use rare archival materials.

YIVO today is both a training institution and a research institution. We train young archivists in the handling and processing of primary materials—often hundreds of years old—and in the skills needed to digitize them, but we also train young researchers and scholars in how to use these materials and how to think about Eastern European Jewish history in the widest historical and cultural contexts. Through our ever-expanding classes, in-person and online programs, and exhibitions, YIVO balances culture with history, research with teaching, and the needs of scholars with the needs of the broader community. YIVO’s mission, goals, and work remain as important for the Jewish future as 100 years ago—and perhaps even more so.

We bridge YIVO’s first and second centuries amid mounting uncertainty and an alarming rise in antisemitism. But YIVO’s experiences—and its ability to adapt and flourish—remind us of the extraordinary strength, humanism, and courage of the Jewish people in the face of existential threats.

Happy New Year!

Jonathan Brent
Executive Director & CEO

Donate now