Nusakh Vilne Memorial: Revelations from the Archives and the Significance of History

Annual Nusakh Vilne Memorial Program Sponsored by Nusakh Vilne Admission: Free

Join us in commemorating the Jewish community of Vilna through poetry, music, and presentation. This year, Ruth Baran-Gerold and Michael Fox recite poetry; Perl Teitelbaum and Lauren Brady perform music; and YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent delivers a presentation, “The YIVO Vilna Collections: Revelations from the Archives and the Significance of History." Mikhl Baran will recite the haskore and yizkor. Chaired by Elliott Palevsky. 

A reception will follow the presentations.

About the Participants

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.

Michael (Menachem) Fox is a child psychologist who in addition to his regular credentials is licensed as a Yiddish Speaking Psychologist. His current practice is mainly with the broad Hasidic populations of Williamsburg, Boro Park, and Rockland County. In his youth, Michael taught Yiddish and Yiddishe gezang in the children’s folkshules of the Workmen’s Circle, Sholem Aleichem Institute, and the Unaffiliated Yiddish Schools. He also led gezang at the Columbia/YIVO summer institutes for a number of years. In his theatrical capacity, Michael co-wrote the popular “Kids & Yiddish” show, served as its principal songwriter, and often also performed in its varied iterations over eleven holiday seasons. Most recently, Michael starred in the acclaimed “Two by Wolf” with New Yiddish Rep. In the literary sphere, in addition to writing two plays, and an autobiography, Michael translated into English a soon to be published anthology of poems by his father, the esteemed Yiddish poet Chaim Leib Fuchs. 

Elliott (Elye) Palevsky has taught Yiddish Language and culture at the Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University and at Queens College, CUNY. He is the active Emeritus CEO of the River Garden Senior Service system which he developed in Jacksonville, Florida. Elye is the son of Chayele (Porus) and the late Simon Palevsky; both were Partisans in the woods near Vilna.  In New York they became founders and leaders of Nusakh Vilna and of Camp Hemshekh of which Elye is also a “son.”

Perl Teitelbaum is a native Yiddish speaker and an experienced teacher of Yiddish, Spanish, and English to speakers of other languages. Her courses integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing to help students understand basic conversational Yiddish, its vocabulary and its grammatical structures. Teitelbaum holds a Master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University and is an accomplished singer. Her singing can be heard on the recordings Vaserl, Zumerteg, Fli, Fli, My Flishlang and on the soundtrack of the documentary film Image Before My Eyes. Teitelbaum has taught Yiddish at the YIVO Summer Intensive Program, New York University, Stern College for Women, the Shevach High School for Girls, the 92nd Street Y, the Central Queens Y, Yugntruf, Workmen’s Circle,  and Klezkamp.