Chaim Bloch Collection, 1916-1969 (AR 7155) [Collection is digitized and available online]
Born in Nagybocskó, Austria-Hungary (now in the Ukraine) on June 27, 1881, Chaim Bloch was ordained as a rabbi and emigrated to Vienna in 1915. He served as a chaplain in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, and afterwards worked as an author in Vienna. Most prominently, he wrote a book about the Golem of Prague. In 1939, Bloch emigrated to Great Britain and then moved on to the United States, where he continued his literary work.
Institute for Proletarian Yiddish Culture Records (RG 1522)
Administrative and financial documents of the Institute. Literary, folklore, linguistic and political documents collected or generated by the Institute.
The collection consists of miscellaneous materials pertaining to Jewish folklore and includes the following: Materials relating to YIVO Projects: samples of Yiddish dialects recorded on sound discs by Beatrice Silverman-Weinreich in 1948 and 1949 during her conversations with informants from Eastern Europe; materials from the Passover Survey, conducted by Beatrice Silverman-Weinreich in 1949. Entries for the contest about the symbolic meaning of the number '7' according to Jewish tradition, 1953. Collections of proverbs and sayings. Replies to a questionnaire from the *Jewish Daily Forward* about Jewish customs, 1945. Folk poetry, mainly in the style of *badkhones* (rhymes performed by a *badkhan* - wedding entertainer). Samples of *ketubot* (marriage contracts), *t'noyim* (engagement contracts), divorce letters, amulets, etc.
Judah Loeb (Yehude Leyb) Cahan papers (RG 202)
Cahan was a Jewish ethnographer, founding member of YIVO in Vilna and of the American branch of YIVO in New York, chairman of the YIVO Folklore Section and member of the YIVO Executive Committee. Collection includes manuscripts, correspondence and clippings relating primarily to Cahan's work in Yiddish folklore. Correspondence with Max Weinreich, Shmuel Zanvil Pipe, Zalman Reisen, Nechama Epstein and Nahum Shtif relating to the organization of YIVO, Vilna. Collections of folklore including items used in *Shtudyes vegn yidishe folksshafung* (Studies on Jewish Folk Creativity), ed. Max Weinreich, N.Y., 1952. Materials of the J.L. Cahan Folklore Club of YIVO, 1949.
A. Litwin was the pen name of Samuel Hurwitz, a Yiddish journalist, editor, ethnographer and poet. Series III of this collection concerns Jewish folklore.
Papers of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (RG 683)
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was an Associate Professor of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania and an editor for Jewish Folklore and Ethnography, N.Y.. She also directed the YIVO Folksong Project (RG 2299). The collection contains a number of manuscripts of papers submitted for courses in Jewish folklore, especially relating to Orthodox and Hasidic communities in Brooklyn.
Papers of Henry Stollnitz (RG 1209)
Henry Stollnitz was a reform rabbi and cantor, writer, performer. He was born in Germany and came to the U.S. in 1881. Served with congregations in New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Orange and Hoboken (New Jersey), and Tampa (Florida).The collection contains Manuscripts, typescripts, clippings, and printed materials by and about Stollnitz on Polish-Jewish folklore, religious issues, social and political questions and other subjects, 1887-1931.
Papers of Uriel Weinreich (RG 552)
The papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts, tapes and other materials relating to Uriel Weinreich's scholarly activities. The collection also contains articles, notes, and lectures in the field of linguistics and Jewish folklore.
Records of the YIVO Ethnographic Committee (RG 1.2) [Collection is digitized and available online]
The Ethnographic Committee was a subcommittee of the Philological Section of the YIVO Institute in Vilna. Originally, beginning in 1925, the Committee was jointly sponsored by the YIVO and the S. An-Ski Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in Vilna (founded in 1919 by S. An-Ski and named for him following his death in 1920). The activities of the Ethnographic Committee consisted of collecting folklore materials, preparing and analyzing folklore questionnaires, corresponding with folklore collectors throughout the world, and maintaining a museum.
Yefim Samolovitch Raize Papers (RG 1309)
The collection contains a Russian typescript of "Folklore of the Jews of Eastern Europe" an anthology prepared by Raize.
YIVO Folksong Project (RG 2299)
This collection consists of an estimated 320 hours of 2,000 folksongs and oral histories from 75 informants who participated in the YIVO Folksong Project directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (BKG) from 1973-1975, under the auspices of YIVO. The YIVO Folksong Project (YFP) collected for the first time Eastern European Jewish songs in their social context, as part of the exhaustive repertoire of the informants, and includes recordings from genres and groups which are rarely documented in scholarship: Purim folk dramas and parodies; traditional preachers and wedding jesters; learning tunes from religious primary schools; street singers and broadside ballads; songs from secular schools, political parties, and social movements; literary and musical circles; songs from the ghettos and camps during the Holocaust; accounts of the transmission of songs from Europe to America and vice versa.
