Search results

It is with sadness that the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research mourns the passing of Theodore Bikel (1924-2015). Mr. Bikel was a true renassaince man of the 20th century with prolific achievements in theatre, film and music, as well as a humanitarian who fought for civil and workers' rights. He ...

Theodore Bikel (1924 - 2015) sings "Di zun vet aruntergeyn" at the YIVO 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon in his honor on June 18, 2015.

The week of June 15, 2015 set the heads of Yiddish and Jewish culture aficionados in New York City spinning: Kulturfest, a week-long celebration of Jewish performing arts, offered an almost overwhelming array of concerts, theatrical performances, and lectures across the city, with sometimes more than one event taking place simultaneously.

YIVO’s contribution to Kulturfest was the world premiere of the Modicut Project, a reinterpretation of the first Yiddish language puppet theater in the U.S., which flourished in the 1920s-1930s in New York City. An artist-scholar collaboration between Great Small Works and Rutgers Professor Edward Portnoy, the new, original play brings together the sensibilities of 1920s avant garde puppet theater, socialism, political activism, Yiddish, ethnographic fieldwork, and identity politics with the stagecraft of Great Small Works.