1. What is YIVO?
2. What is EPYC?
3. Why EPYC?
4. What about Yiddish?
5. How is this website organized?
6. How can I use the website in my teaching?
7. Why Lublin?
1. What is YIVO?
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded in Vilna, Lithuania in 1925. Saved from the destruction and ashes of the Nazi policy of Jewish destruction, it relocated to New York in 1940, transferring and safeguarding only parts of the treasures the institute once housed. YIVO is a non-profit organization that has carried the torch of Jewish cultural survival by safeguarding documents and artifacts since WWII.
Please call or visit us in New York, and inquire about all the programs the institute supports. YIVO can be found on the web at www.yivoinstitute.org.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
15 West 16th St.
New York, NY 10011
Ph. (212) 246-6080
Fax (212) 292-1892
yivomail@yivo.cjh.org
2. What is EPYC?
The complete EPYC package is made up of 4 sections:- § Two introductory essays for teachers-a general history of Poland and an overview of Jewish cultural life in Eastern Europe until WWII.
- § The centerpiece of the curriculum: a case-study monograph on the city of Lublin, Poland, which traces Jewish history from settlement through destruction. City history offers a unique, mid-range perspective on the life of a people. The smaller scale helps students visualize and relate to ordinary and extraordinary individuals as they confront challenges, make choices, and learn how to survive as Jews and as citizens in diverse societies. The monograph is supported by supplemental materials, including maps, images, and primary and secondary documents.
- § Two curriculum manuals (basic and advanced) that offer suggested activities and curriculum connections for teachers, based on the Lublin monograph. The manuals emphasize document-based learning and draw connections between the historical content and contemporary issues.
- § This website, "When these streets heard Yiddish," which serves as a complement to the text materials and a stand-alone tool for research and learning.
3. Why EPYC?
As the world's premier center for the study of Eastern European Jewry and Yiddish culture, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research offers a unique link to a rich and relevant history. EPYC ("Educational Program in Yiddish Culture") reflects YIVO's firm belief that this history has an important place in today's high schools. With the creation of this curriculum package, YIVO has voiced its decision to become directly involved in the education of our young people, offering a perspective that has been obscured or silenced in the curriculums of the majority our high schools.
Academics in the field have expressed concern that our Eastern European history has been minimized at the expense of the western perspective. This has created an inaccurate and incomplete understanding of our cultural heritage. In addition to correcting this imbalance, EPYC tackles broader issues that carry contemporary resonance. With its focus on issues of minority existence within the larger social and political context, EPYC-as a curriculum and as a perspective-takes on special urgency and importance, beyond its initial goals.
For the continued development and dissemination of the EPYC program, the YIVO Institute is still searching for support and funds. We conduct Teacher Training Seminars and we publish this material in order to make it accessible to all schools. We welcome your support and contributions.
The Rights to translate the texts are available and the website itself has been prepared for easy translation into any language. Please contact YIVO directly to get the relevant information.
4. What about Yiddish?
Linguistic adaptation has always been a way for Jews in the Diaspora to connect with a broader culture while still maintaining the integrity of their internal communal life. The ancient Jews of Babylonia developed their own specialized form of the local Aramaic; the scholars who settled the academic towns of Sura and Pumbadita used this Jewish-Aramaic language to compose the famous Babylonian Talmud. As Jews settled in other regions, linguistic expansion became a trademark of their cultural evolution. Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish all developed over time, as diverse Jewish communities put down roots in unique cultural environments.
During its thousand years of active use, Yiddish has played a pivotal role in Eastern European Jewish culture. The language and culture, in fact, developed together, each helping to shape and enhance the other. Yiddish became a major vessel of the group's cultural output.
Yiddish was the language of everyday life, school, market, playground, and study. It also produced a rich and sophisticated literature. Although not all Jews in Eastern Europe spoke Yiddish-and those who did usually spoke other languages as well-our emphasis on Yiddish is deliberate. The Yiddish language, which survived the migration east from the Rhine into Poland, Russia, and Lithuania, symbolizes cultural survival, continuity, development, and adaptation. Unlike Aramaic, which now exists primarily in Jewish texts, elements of Yiddish still live through the words, phrases, and associations that remain part of Jewish and secular culture. Language is a powerful access point into the cultural life of a group; this is especially true of Yiddish, which still resonates so strongly. If we dismiss the Yiddish language, we lose the key to a deeper understanding of Eastern European Jewish life.
5. How is this website organized?
This site is organized into three main sections-Lives, Places, and Culture-in addition to supplementary timelines, maps, and a glossary. The navigational tool at the top of every page will help you remember where you've been and how each page fits into the larger categories. You might also choose to take one of the three "guided tours" of the site, which focus on Key Figures, Folklore, and Pluralism within Jewish life. Each tour presents the content of the site through a unique lens, offering a more didactic exploration of the topic in a carefully sequenced manner.
Throughout the site, internal links, thought questions, and links to other websites help users make important connections between the wealth of historical information found here and their own experiences.
The website's intended audience includes teachers and students who are engaged in a study of Eastern European Jewish history and culture, as well as members of the general public who have an interest in the topic. Although When These Streets Spoke Yiddish is a component of the EPYC curriculum package, it is also a stand-alone site. Taking a broader perspective than the written curriculum, the site opens up topics and issues relevant to all students of Eastern European history and culture.
6. How can I use the website in my teaching?
This website can be a powerful educational tool whether or not you use it in conjunction with the related EPYC curriculum materials. Although the website and the EPYC curriculum package complement one another, neither is a substitute for the other.
The website contains a great deal of supplementary information and media not available in the printed materials. The maps, photographs, timelines, and sound clips offered here can help animate many of the themes and topics raised in the EPYC package. A study of the economic life of Lublin can be supplemented, for example, by a look at the photographs of Jewish shops on Lubartovska Street. Looking at the street can then lead students to explore the life beyond it. Students investigating the culture of interwar Lublin can benefit from hearing samples of klezmer music, and clips of spoken Yiddish can inform their study of Yiddish literature. The voices and personalities of community leaders and common folk alike will come across through their own words, imbuing the fabric of Jewish life with added texture and richness.
The primary resources and stimulating thought questions used throughout the website also enable students to go beyond the mere acquisition of information. These materials will help students improve their historical thinking skills-analyzing historical documents and drawing appropriate conclusions. In addition, the multi-layered timelines and animated historical maps allow students to place the events and trends of Eastern European Jewish history within a broader historical context, making connections to other times and places.
As with the curriculum manuals, the website is intended not only to provide insights into the historical setting, but also to elicit connections between historical situations and contemporary issues. An exploration of various aspects of Eastern European Jewish life can lead students to examine the functioning of their own communities, the relationships between various ethnic and mainstream cultures, and the connections between culture, economics, and politics.
Students can use the site as a general source for background reading, as a resource for research on specific topics, or as a basis for responding to teacher-assigned questions. The site will be most useful to your classroom curriculum when students are given clear assignments with specific tasks or questions to answer. Teachers using the site with students should therefore familiarize themselves thoroughly with its format and content. Teachers might also choose to use the site for their own edification-following its paths and links to enhance their own background knowledge on the topic.
7. Why Lublin?
The issues and challenges faced by the Jews of Lublin reflect many key aspects of Eastern European Jewish life in general over the centuries. Lublin was a central crossroads and a royal city-important politically, economically, and commercially. Early Jewish settlement there followed the patterns of protection and separation that typified Jewish settlement in most cities at the time.
Because of its strategic location, Lublin became a center of Jewish learning as well as the headquarters of the Vaad Haartzot ("Council of the Lands"), the supreme governing body of the Eastern European Jewish communities. By the 19th century, however, following two centuries of political partitions and social upheavals, Lublin lost its regional and international importance, the community's economic prosperity declined, and the communal life never again reached the heights of it earlier productivity.
Despite these changes, the Jewish minority of Lublin continued to guard its cultural baggage, its distinctiveness, and the ways it deployed this culture to interpret and create meaning from its experiences. Cultural life and output was vibrant and full despite limited resources.
Lublin thus provides insights into minority life in a wealthy center as well as a more anonymous settlement.