YIVO and U. Penn to Begin Year-Long Collaboration

During the coming academic year (2002-2003) YIVO will embark on an exciting and unprecedented collaboration with the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The Center, the major American institution in the field of post-graduate Jewish Studies, sponsors a Fellowship Program that annually hosts leading academics from around the world to share their research in a distinct area of Judaica scholarship. The year's Fellowship program theme is to be "Jewish history and Culture in Eastern Europe, 1600-2000," and more than 20 of the world's leading scholars in that field, from Europe, Israel, and the United States will be coming to the University of Pennsylvania for a year of shared learning and collaboration. Given YIVO's unmatched archival and library resources in this area of Jewish Scholarship, it was only natural for YIVO to become involved in next year's Fellowship Program.

Discussions concerning possible joint collaboration began last December at the 33rd Annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, DC. It was there that YIVO's Executive Director, Dr. Carl J. Rheins, met with Dr. David Ruderman, the Center's Director, to suggest a variety of collaborative efforts. The results are expected to foster extensive, intensive and highly productive cooperation between the two institutions.

"Fellows at the Center for Judaic Studies will receive special access to YIVO's collections and the privilege of visiting-scholar status at our library and archives," Rheins noted. "YIVO's academic staff members have, in turn, been invited to participate fully in the Center's weekly seminars, in which the fellows share and discuss their latest research. This fine and timely plan will benefit us all."

Additionally, YIVO and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies will cosponsor a year long lecture series featuring some of the most distinguished international scholars in the field of East European Jewish Studies. A spring conference at YIVO will showcase the program's work.

Among the questions the seminar will consider are: What historical factors made the rise of modernism possible among the East European Jews? What were the lines of influence between Jews and their mostly Slavic neighbors? How have the pioneering figures of Jewish scholarship in Eastern Europe, including the founders of YIVO, shaped the field's intellectual lineage? In what ways did East European Jewry remain a coherent entity across the periodic re-castings of political boundaries in the region? To what degree does the phenomenon of "crisis" adequately define the roots of the radical changes that characterize the modern period of East European Jewish history?

The collaborative effort will be jointly supervised by Prof. Benjamin Nathans of the University of Pennsylvania, this year's Fellowship Program Coordinator, and Prof. Allan Nadler of Drew University, YIVO's Coordinator of Academic Affairs.

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