Jews -- Folklore

The Abraham Sutzkever-Szmerke Kaczerginski Historical Collection contains letters, manuscripts, and historical documents which were saved by the Yiddish poets Avraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski in the Vilna Ghetto. Sutzkever, Kaczerginski, and other members of the Paper Brigade, conscripted Jewish workers who were forced to work under the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, saved thousands of books, manuscripts and documents at great risk to their lives by hiding them in various places in the Vilna Ghetto. After the war the surviving members recovered many of the hidden items. Sutzkever sent many of these rescued materials to the YIVO Institute in New York from the period 1947 to 1956. The collection consists of 8 series and includes correspondence of writers, intellectuals, communal leaders, rabbinical figures; manuscripts of Yiddish and Hebrew writers; theater documents; folklore materials; rabbinical responsa and writings; historical and legal documents; pinkasim and Jewish communal records.

The Bina Weinreich collection consists of correspondance, memos, articles, documents pertaining YIVO publications (Max Weinreich's "History of the Yiddish Language;" the "Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry;" Nahum Stutchkoff's "Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language" and Alexander Harkavy's "Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary"), Uriel Weinreich's publications "College Yiddish" and "English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary," as well as her own publications "Yiddish Folktales" and "Yidishe Folkmayses," personal papers, photographs, folklore and ethnographic materials collected by Bina Weinreich, lectures, papers given, offprints of articles, teaching material, and sound recordings from the "Dialect Project."

The collection holds original translations and clippings of Russian and Yiddish literature into German by Fega Frisch. Also included are some personal documents, such as education records and ID papers.

Correspondence with individuals including Salo Baron, Bernard Baruch, Sidor Belarsky, Ber Borochov, Judah Leob (Leib) Cahan, Jacob de Haas, Mendl Elkin, Ben Zion Goldberg, Alexander Harkavy, Ephim Jeshurin, Yudel Mark, Kalman Marmor, Henry Morgenthau, Melech Ravitch, Zalman Reisen, Edward Sapir, Max Weinreich, Uriel Weinreich, Yehoash. Correspondence with organizations. Family correspondence. Letters from former students. Biographical materials, such as curriculum vitae, autobiographical notes, I.D. cards, letters of recommendation. Financial records. Clippings of Joffe's publications, of articles about him. Reports, minutes, plans, memoranda and correspondence relating to the Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language. Materials relating to the YIVO Institute. Notes of Executive Committee meetings. Notes on Board of Directors meetings. Materials of the Research and Training Division. Materials on YIVO Annual Conferences. Materials on the YIVO in Vilna. Materials relating to Joffe's courses and lectures: notes on Yiddish courses, Yiddish composition, phonetics, morphology, etymology. Materials relating to the following topics: dictionaries; Russian literature and linguistics; Old-Yiddish language and literature; the Bove-bukh by Elias Levita (Elia Bachur). Materials relating to music, musicians, Yiddish songs, music institutions, recordings. Folklore materials: folksongs, proverbs, anecdotes.

The papers relate to Weinreich's work in the fields of Yiddish linguistics, literature, and Jewish folkore, education, history, as well as to his organizational activities at YIVO. Materials on Yiddish language and linguistics. Linguistic maps of Yiddish. Notes on orthography, anglicisms. Material from Joshua Fishman's project "Survey of Language Resources of American Ethnic Groups." Material from the Fifth International Congress on Linguistics, 1939. Notes and manuscripts on Old Yiddish, modern Yiddish, Alsatian Yiddish. Proofs and notes for Uriel Weinreich's Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary. News clippings about the Groyser yidisher verterbukh (The Great Yiddish Dictionary). Notes on other dictionaries and glossaries. Notes and cards relating to Weinreich's History of the Yiddish Language. Materials of the Atran Foundation such as correspondence, memos, reports. Correspondence about the Columbia Linguistics Department, 1967. Manuscript by Judah Joffe on linguistics. Weinreich's course at YIVO on "Basic Works of Jewish Literature." Notes and manuscripts by M. Weinreich on Mendele Moykher Sforim. Teaching materials. Roll books, attendance sheets, exams, term papers, course outlines for courses given at City College of New York and at UCLA in Los Angeles. Correspondence of Max Weinreich with Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Simon Dubnow, Rachel (Shoshke) Erlich, Joshua Fishman, Rudolf Glanz, Abraham Golomb, Chaim Grade, Szmerke Kaczerginski, Moses (Moyshe) Kligsberg, Leibush Lehrer, Itzik Manger, Shlomo Noble, David Pinsky, Melech Ravitch, Dov Sadan, Pinchas Schwartz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Abraham Sutzkever, Zosa Szajkowski.

The collection is divided into 5 series: I) Personal Papers and General Correspondence (folders 1-5); II) Journalistic Articles (6-51b); III) Jewish Folklore (52-99); IV) Various Materials (100-105); V) Photographs (106-117).The collection includes Yiddish folkore materials, including notebooks of songs, folk plays, folktales, folk humor, anecdotes, proverbs. Clippings of Litwin's articles relating to various topics, including: Russia, 1917-1930; Palestine and Zionism; towns and cities in Europe; landsmanshaftn; Poale Zion activities, 1915-1928; Jewish occupations; colonization and farming; Jewish holidays; Yiddish theater; education. Poems by Litwin. Photographs of personalities, towns in Europe. Correspondence with Abraham Cahan, Saul Ginsburg, Abraham Liessin, Baal Makhshoves (Isidor Eliashev), Shmuel Niger, Zalman Reisen, Sholem Aleichem, Israel Zinberg. Family correspondence.

The collection consists primarily of published Jewish and Yiddish sheet music. Included are choral and orchestral arrangements, and some manuscripts of Jewish liturgical music. Miscellaneous music catalogs. Slides and text of a Bobover Purim play. Slides of the wedding of Rabbi Ben-Zion Halberstam in Bobowa, Poland, in 1931. Manuscripts of papers submitted for courses in Jewish folkore, especially relating to Orthodox and Hasidic communities in Brooklyn.

The papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts, tapes and other materials relating to Uriel Weinreich's scholarly activities. Correspondence with individuals including Edward Bendix, William Bright, Noam Chomsky, Joshua Fishman, Morris Halle, Marvin Herzog, William Labov, Andre Martinet, Dan Miron, Herbert Paper, Puna S. Ray, Dov Sadan, Sanford A. Schane, Chone Shmeruk, Leizer Vilenkin, Ruth Wisse, Leonard Wolf, Stoddard Worth, Karl Zimmer. Correspondence with societies, research institutions and Jewish cultural institutions. Materials relating to the Atran Chair. Correspondence with YIVO and the YIVO Planning and Research Commission. Correspondence and manuscripts of articles for Field of Yiddish II. Tapes of Conference on Yiddish Studies. Articles, notes, and lectures in the field of linguistics and Jewish folklore. Index card files, including: lexicon to Bove Bukh; bibliography of Old Yiddish Literature; bibliography on Yiddish and general linguistics; bibliography on semantics.

This collection consists of an estimated 320 hours of 2,000 folksongs and oral histories from 75 informants who participated in the YIVO Folksong Project directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (BKG) from 1973-1975, under the auspices of YIVO. This collection is a one-of-a-kind, large-scale gathering of oral histories centered around traditional Yiddish music.