The National Yiddish Book Centre

The National Yiddish Book Center was established in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1980.  The museum/library was founded by the then graduate student Aaron Lansky, who was seeking out Yiddish literature for his thesis.

Yiddish had been the language of secular discourse for three-quarters of the world’s Jews for over a thousand years.  Yiddish, along with other Jewish vernaculars, such as Judeo-Arabic and Ladino were derived from, and used, Hebrew letters.  They were essentially bastard languages that had evolved during the course of Jewish migrations.

For most of history, Yiddish had been primarily a spoken language, However, by the early twentieth century, there was a whole body of Yiddish literature that encompassed everything from daily newspapers and pulp fiction to political and philosophical literature.  Unfortunately, this vibrant culture was all but annihilated by the holocaust.  Thus, by the time Lansky sought out Yiddish literature, only an estimated 70,000 books were thought to have survived.

Lansky’s appeal and subsequent book collecting is told in his book Outwitting History (2005).  The book chronicles his often funny, but ultimately desperate, rescue of books from rubbish skips, demolition sites, old libraries, basements and various abandoned buildings.  Most poignantly, it chronicles the donations from elderly Jews, who having no one else to pass their Yiddish books onto, donated them to him.  It was often with a deep sadness, but ultimately a great sense of relief, that the books were handed over.  Lansky recounts how the handing over invariably became a ceremony, in which he was fed and regaled with the history of each individual book.  It was, Lansky explained, an enacting of ritual transmission. 

Today, Lansky has collected over 1.5 million books, with about 1,000 new books arriving each week.  During my visit, staff were busy unpacking a crate sent from Zimbabwe. There, as in so many other places throughout the world, the surviving Jewish community has no use for Yiddish books because they can no longer read them.

The success of the Book Center goes far beyond its collection, however. It describes itself not as a storehouse for dusty books no one will ever read again, but as a resource that returns old books to a new generation of readers.  To that end, it has supplied 450 major universities in 26 countries with books from its duplicate holdings.  Demand for books is continuous, but because many of the books are in poor condition, the center no longer has sufficient supplies to meet demand. Therefore, it has recently launched a programme to digitize its collection, thus making high-quality reprints available on demand (http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/yiddish-books). Revenue from sales helps to fund the centre and its extensive educational and cultural activities. 

The centre is an amazing achievement and stands as monumental testimony to one man’s quest to rescue an entire body of literature. Today, anyone, anywhere, can study Yiddish literature and culture in a way heretofore impossible.  Seventy years since its virtual eradication, Yiddish literature is enjoying a spectacular renaissance.  The ritual transmission continues, sort of! 

last time modified: Oct. 19, 2011, 8:41 p.m.