The Norman E. Alexander Library is proud to announce the digital version of “Yiddish at Columbia,” which appeared in a physical version the Chang Gallery of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library during the Spring of 2018.  The exhibit  was conceived to celebrate the completion of the digitization of the field notes from the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ).

Themes in the exhibit deal with the history of Yiddish in academia and at Columbia specifically, early Yiddish materials, Yiddish in religion and ritual, Yiddish theatre, the Yiddish press, and of course, the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, a ground-breaking project begun by Professor Uriel Weinreich to trace linguistic variants of Yiddish from the generation of European immigrants in the aftermath of World War II.

As part of a grant from the Mellon Foundation to preserve audio and moving image collections, the reel to reel tapes of the interviews from the LCAAJ will also be re-digitized to preservation standards in the coming years.