Join us for a day of events.

Featuring the Melinda Rosenblatt Lecture presented by Steven Zipperstein

All events are free and open to the public.

Schedule

2 p.m. |  The 2017 Melinda Rosenblatt Lecture presented by Steven Zipperstein: "Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History"

The Kishinev pogrom of 1903 was the first event in Russian Jewish life to receive international attention. The riot in the obscure border town, which left forty-nine dead, dominated headlines in the western press for weeks, and in the Yiddish press in the United States for months. It intruded on Russian-U.S. relations; had a lasting influence on an astonishing array of institutions, from the Israeli army to the NAACP; and was the likely inspiration for the first version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Steven Zipperstein considers the ways the pogrom shaped history and why it had such profound and far-reaching effects. 

Steven Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University and the author and editor of eight books, including The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (winner of the Smilen Prize for the outstanding book in Jewish history), Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (winner of the National Jewish Book Award), and Imagining Russian Jewry. He has been awarded the Leviant Prize of the Modern Language Association, the Judah Magnes Gold Medal of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, and the Koret Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the American Jewish community.

11 a.m. | Gallery Talk: Beyond the Forest: Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe, 2004-2012, with Loli Kantor

Loli Kantor talks about her exhibit Beyond the Forest, a photographic series that represents the fragile renewal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the early twenty-first century. Kantor, an Israeli-American photographer, turned a journey to discover the world of her family, most of whom perished in the Holocaust, into a broader engagement with the daily life of the Jews of Eastern Europe today.

Beyond the Forest: Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe, 2004–2012 will be in the Yiddish Book Center’s Brechner Gallery through October 15, 2017.

12 p.m. | Tour the world's first Yiddish museum!

This 45-minute tour takes the visitor through the Yiddish Book Center's museum exhibits and allows them to...

DISCOVER the whole of Yiddish literature and its writers
LEARN about Yiddish language
ENCOUNTER the stories of three immigrant families told through words, pictures, and artifacts
EXPERIENCE the world of rural Jews in 1912-1914
GLIMPSE life in the American Jewish home
EXPLORE a Yiddish print shop
WATCH classic Yiddish film clips
LISTEN to vintage Yiddish radio 
SEE our visiting exhibits
TOUR the Yiddish Writers Garden, and more