Yiddish Book Center

Specialties

In the past three decades the Book Center has rescued a million endangered Yiddish books, strengthened collections at the world’s great libraries, digitized and posted online the full texts of 11,000 Yiddish volumes, and offered a range of innovative programs. With most Yiddish titles collected and safe, the Center is now focusing on educational opportunities for college students, graduate students, and adults. The Center houses exhibitions about Yiddish culture and other unique resources and welcomes thousands of visitors to its building every year.

History

Established in 1980.

As a 23-​year-​old graduate student, Aaron Lansky stumbled upon an alarming fact: thousands of priceless Yiddish books — books that had survived Hitler and Stalin — were being discarded. An entire literature was on the verge of extinction.

Lansky issued a public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books, and Jews from all over America rallied to the call.

Soon Lansky and co-​workers were on the road, hauling Jewish books from cellars and attics, synagogues and abandoned buildings. The work of rescue and collection continues to this day.

Originally, scholars estimated there were 70,000 Yiddish books extant and recoverable. The Center saved that number in six months and has gone on to recover one million volumes; the achievement has been hailed as the «the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history.» In recent years, the Center has developed innovative educational programs that open up these books to new generations of readers, students, and scholars.

Meet the Business Owner

Aaron L.

Business Owner

After graduating from Hampshire College in 1977 with a B.A. in modern Jewish history, the Book Center’s Founder and President, Aaron Lansky, enrolled in a graduate program in East European Jewish studies at McGill University in Montréal. There he discovered that large numbers of Yiddish books were being destroyed — not by anti-​Semites, but by Jews who could not read the language of their own parents and grandparents.

Convinced that someone had to save those books, Lansky, ignoring the cautions of experts who considered the task impossible, left McGill and started what he then called the National Yiddish Book Exchange. Today the National Yiddish Book Center’s collection totals over a million volumes; and Lansky has gone on to receive a National Jewish Book Award, honorary doctorates from Amherst College and the State University of New York, and a 1989 «Genius Grant» from the MacArthur Foundation.