2003 Year-End Letter

December 9, 2003

Sholem aleykhem! I’m writing to ask you to renew your annual membership in the National Yiddish Book Center. But first I want to let you know what we’ve accomplished with your support during the year just past, and to bring you up to date on our exciting plans for 2004 and beyond.

As you’ll recall, the last time I wrote was to ask you to help us place the content of our Yiddish books online. Thanks to your help, we’ve now finished converting more than 3.5 million pages. By this coming summer, anyone anywhere will be able to log onto our website and read the complete text of any Yiddish book in our collection, free of charge. Quite literally, Yiddish will become the single most accessible literature on the planet!

But with hundreds of thousands of Yiddish books still at risk, with thousands of missing titles still to be found, and with anti-Semitism and attacks against Jewish communities on the rise, our work has assumed a whole new urgency. Do you remember, for example, the wooden crate that arrived last summer packed with 2,000 Yiddish books from the synagogue of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe? The day before Yom Kippur we received word that that synagogue had burned to the ground. If you hadn’t helped us save those books when you did, they would surely have been lost!

Which is why we’ve been stepping up our search for Jewish books in other trouble spots around the globe. Just two days ago I received an urgent email, in Yiddish, from the head of a Yiddish cultural organization in Caracas, Venezuela:

Khoshever fraynt Lansky: Mir noytikn ayer hilf kidey tsu rateven toyznter yidishe bikher. Der alter dor do iz avek, un der nayer vil gornisht visn fun undzer sheyner, tayerer literarisher yerushe. In di oygn fun dem nayem dor, bin ikh nisht mer vi a Don Kikhot. … Ir hot dokh oykh ibergelebt azoyns, vet ir efsher mikh kenen farshteyn.

Honored Mr. Lansky: We need your help to save thousands of Yiddish books. The old generation here has passed on, and the new one wants nothing to do with our beautiful, precious literary inheritance. In the eyes of the new generation I am nothing more than a Don Quixote. … After all you’ve been through, perhaps you’ll be able to understand me.

We do understand. We understand that those books will undoubtedly include South American imprints – Yiddish titles published in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile that we’ve never seen before. And we understand that because of Venezuela’s political instability, there’s not a moment to lose. We’ve already booked a flight; I’ll write you as soon as we return to let you know what we find.

Meanwhile our small staff has been working very long hours to sort through the tens of thousands of volumes we’ve collected during the past year. Our 237 zamlers continue to send us almost 1,000 books a week! With the help of the United States Holocaust Museum, we recently recovered 5,000 amazing volumes – many of them published right after the War – that had belonged to a group of French Jewish resistance fighters. They had been stored for years in a Paris attic. Thanks to your help, our interns spent the summer unpacking and sorting these and a mountain of other boxes in our Holyoke warehouse. Some of the books they found are literally the last known copies on earth.

Our backlog of unique titles waiting to be digitized has now reached almost 7,000 – a formidable challenge for the years ahead. Naturally, we’ve begun with those in greatest demand. In February, we’ll announce the long-awaited release of our David and Sylvia Steiner Yizkor Book Project. A joint undertaking with The New York Public Library, the historic Steiner project will enable us to produce on-demand, clothbound reprints of nearly all the approximately 700 memorial volumes chronicling Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. An essential source for historical and genealogical research, our reprints should quickly take their place in research libraries, Holocaust centers and synagogue libraries around the world.

Other important publications are also on the way. Just this month we published a hardcover Annotated Bibliography of the Noah Cotsen Library of Yiddish Children’s Literature, featuring plot summaries, in English, of every one of the 1,000 Yiddish kids’ books digitized from our own holdings and those of the YIVO Institute in New York. In mid-winter we’ll release the first-ever, two-volume, 767-page Master Catalog of Yiddish Books, listing all 13,000 titles digitized through our Spielberg Library. And in September 2004, Algonquin Press will release my own book, recounting my collection adventures during the Center’s early years, my experiences with an older, Yiddish-speaking generation, and my reflections on the deeper meaning of Yiddish culture for contemporary Jewish identity.

But that’s not all. Even though demand for Yiddish books, in Yiddish, is increasing, we remain keenly aware of the fact that the vast majority of American Jews cannot read Yiddish books in the original. Because Yiddish literature is so fascinating, and because more than 99% of Yiddish books are unavailable in English, we have redoubled our efforts to translate the best Yiddish literature into English. Together with our partners, the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature and Yale University Press, we have now contracted with expert Yiddish translators in the United States, England and Israel. Beginning soon, you can expect a steady stream of previously “unknown” masterpieces of modern Yiddish literature: brilliant novels such as Warshawski’s Smugglers, Kulbak’s The Zelmanyaners, Bergelson’s After Everyone and The Full Severity of the Law, and Perle’s Ordinary Jews; powerful short stories by Lamed Shapiro; unforgettable memoirs and reportage by Rachel Auerbach, Jacob Glatstein, and Y.Y. Trunk; an anthology of women poets; and an individual volume of Moishe Leib Halpern’s poetry, rendered into English by the distinguished American poet John Hollander. You can look forward to bilingual excerpts from all these titles in upcoming issues of Pakn Treger.

You can also look forward to full-length audio recordings of the titles we translate, thanks to the generous support of Leonard and Susan Bay Nimoy. (Long before he stepped foot on the bridge of the “Enterprise,” Nimoy, a native Yiddish speaker, acted in an English-language troupe directed by Maurice Schwarz!) We haven’t forgotten sound recordings in Yiddish either: thanks to a grant from Sami Rohr, we’re now working with Montreal’s Jewish Public Library to release re-mastered CDs of more than 100 full-length Yiddish books, beautifully read in Yiddish by native Yiddish speakers.

Rescue, digitization, publication, translation, recording – I think you’ll agree that we’ve got our work cut out for us. But given the tragic ferocity with which Yiddish was ripped from the fabric of Jewish life, our responsibility doesn’t end there. Because as important as it is that we preserve Yiddish literature, it’s equally important that we cultivate new readers.

Iz vi kumt di kats ibern vaser – How do we accomplish that feat? Partly through our new Cowl Center for Yiddish Culture. During the past year the director, Nora Gerard – who came to us after almost 30 years at CBS News – has unleashed a whirlwind of cultural and educational programs: events at the Center most every Sunday afternoon; programs at Symphony Space, the Eldridge Street Synagogue and Upper West Side JCC in New York; sold-out literary evenings in Boston; an upcoming Winter Conference in Ojai, California; and of course our annual five-day Summer Program in Amherst. Much more lies in store for 2004.

We’ve had equal success reaching out to college students. Demand for our Summer Internship Program has grown so much – and our alumni have contributed so richly to contemporary Jewish culture – that we’ve decided to expand the program. This coming summer we’ll double the number of students we accept, and include intensive courses in Yiddish language and modern Yiddish literature. If we can raise the necessary funds in time, we also plan to introduce two year-round fellowships for recent college graduates, who will be able to learn even more about Yiddish culture and share that knowledge with others in the years ahead.

There’s so much more I could tell you about our plans and accomplishments, but my wife assures me this letter is already long enough as it is. What really matters now is that you renew your membership, so we can continue our exciting work.

How important is your contribution?

A lot more than you might imagine. Our board and staff keep a very close watch on expenses. We balance our budget every year, we’ve paid off our debt, and we’re about to launch an endowment campaign to secure Yiddish culture forever. But in the meantime, we depend on this single, once-a-year renewal mailing for fully 65% of our annual income. Quite simply, if you and our other members don’t respond to this letter, all you and I have worked so long and hard to build will be in jeopardy!

Can I count on you again?

Basic membership remains just $36, and includes a year’s subscription to Pakn Treger, our award-winning English-language magazine.

If you can increase your tax-deductible contribution to $54 (3 x “Chai”), we’ll send you a special gift: a lovely, specially-designed notebook with a colorful cover taken from my favorite piece of Yiddish sheet music. It’s perfect as a private sketchbook, address book or personal journal.

For a contribution of $100, we’ll send you not only the journal, but also the brand-new fully illustrated Yiddish edition of The Cat in the Hat (Di kats der payats) by Dr. Seuss. Even if you don’t read Yiddish, this is a conversation piece you won’t want to miss.

And for a tax-deductible contribution of $360 or more, we’ll welcome you to our President’s Circle by sending you the journal, The Cat in the Hat, and a 5-CD set of the all-new, unabridged edition of Leo Rosten’s The New Joys of Yiddish.

Whatever you can afford, I want to assure you that your help will make a difference! I’m enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, together with your new membership card and decal. Please: won’t you take a minute to send your most generous, tax-deductible contribution right now, while it’s still on your mind?

With warm wishes for a likhtikn un freylekhn (a bright and joyous) Chanukah,

Yours,

Aaron Lansky
President

P.S. Any day now you should be receiving the latest Pakn Treger -- just one of the tangible benefits of membership. But I think you’ll agree that the most important benefit is knowing that you’re doing your share to save Yiddish books and culture for a new generation. Please – won’t you renew your membership by sending your most generous, tax-deductible contribution today? A sheynem dank – my special thanks!

Click here to Renew Your Membership.