Outwitting History! The Campaign for the National Yiddish Book Center

FAIN: CH-50435-08

Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA 01002-3375)
Nancy Sherman (Project Director: November 2006 to April 2011)
Susan Bronson (Project Director: April 2011 to November 2011)

Endowment for preservation and international book rescue; public programming; a translation series; and faculty salaries and honoraria in a summer internship program for undergraduates.

"Outwitting History! The Campaign for the National Yiddish Book Center" is a plan to continue the world's most successful effort at saving Yiddish literature and making Yiddish books in their original language or English translations widely accessible. This campaign will ensure, through means of endowment, that the Book Center's substantive and exceptional contributions to the humanities continue in perpetuity. The importance of Yiddish--the language spoken by more than three-quarters of the world's Jews for the thousand years preceding World War II--and the literature it produced, cannot be understated. The endowment yield generated by an NEH grant and subsequent match will provide urgently needed funds to sustain and expand humanities offerings at the National Yiddish Book Center, including preservation and international book rescue, public programs, visiting scholars to the college internship program, and translation services for the Book Center's English-language magazine.