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With digital library, Yiddish books suddenly become accessible to all.

AMY SARA CLARK

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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have been out of print since the 1950s.
Frequently requested writers include
I.L. Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and
Sholem Asch.
Lansky, 47, is a native of New
Bedford, Mass., and a graduate of
Hampshire College in Amherst. He
began his quest to save Yiddish books
as a 23-year-old graduate student in
Eastern European Jewish studies at
McGill University in Montreal.
When the class readings were
assigned, the students would "race to
the Jewish Public Library in Montreal,"
he said. "Occasionally one of us would
find something in the university's
library, but the rest of us had to make
do as best we could because the litera-
ture was literally out of print.
"They used to say the only way to
A new digitally printed book from the
find a Yiddish book was to go to a rare
Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library book dealer in Amsterdam or a garbage
sits on top of several old and decaying
can in Brooklyn," he added.

ntil recently, it seemed you
could find Yiddish books
only in obscure libraries or
the attic of someone's
grandparents. '
But just recently, Yiddish literature
became one of the most accessible on
earth, according to Aaron Lansky,
founder and president of the National
Yiddish Book Center.
On May 6, the center launched its
Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library,
an online bookstore that makes more
than 12,000 out-of-print Yiddish titles
available for purchase directly over the
Internet.
Lansky said the digital library offers
12,000 of the 18,000-20,000 titles that
make up modern Yiddish literature.
This makes it the only major publisher
Yiddish books.
of Yiddish books today.
"A small press in Israel puts out a few
titles, but besides us, that's it," he said.
Readers can search the catalog of titles and order books for
$29 each; members of the center pay less. The order is rout-
ed to a production facility in Pennsylvania, where a digital
printer accesses the previously scanned pages of the requested
book and generates a new paperback copy within minutes.
Most of the titles available through the digital library

To Save A Culture

Lansky feared that books that had survived the Holocaust
and Russian pogroms soon would be thrown out by a
younger generation who couldn't read them. So he took
what he thought would be a two-year leave from his gradu-
ate program and set out "to save the world's Yiddish books .
before it was too late."

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Laughter Through Tears

Yiddish humor program honors Detroit attorney.

DIANA LIEBERMAN

Copy Editor/Entertainment Writer

(--

d.crikpAbikiank

17546 Woodward Ave.

(2 blocks north of McNichols)

Detroit
(313) 865-0331

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7/12

2002

76

2002-2003
SOURCEBOOK

coming soon!

by do Jewish people laugh
at themselves?
Because it's too danger-
ous to laugh at anyone else.
Experts on Yiddish and Yiddish
humor will convene July 22-July 26 at
the National Yiddish Book Center in
Amherst, Mass., to discuss why it real-
ly is that Jewish people laugh at them-
selves — and will do a bit of enter-
taining, as well.
The event, called "Doktoyrim Heysen
Lakhn (Doctors Prescribe Laughter),"
was made possible by a gift from the

Detroit-based law
firm Barris, Sott,
Denn and Driker in
honor of the 65th
birthday of partner
Eugene Driker, a
board member of
the center.
"My parents were
Eugene Driker
both immigrants
and Yiddish speak-
ers," said Driker,
who lives in Detroit. "I'm in a group
that studies Yiddish once a week, and
my family has supported Yiddish pro-
gramming at the Oak Park Jewish
[Community] Center."

As a thank-you to his partners,
Driker gave each of them the latest
edition of Leo Rosten's The Joys of
Yiddish, "so they'll know what I'm
talking about."
Driker and his wife, Elaine, will
attend the five-day conference with
grandson Charles Driker-Ohren, 8, of
Huntington Woods. The event
includes special programming for chil-
dren ages 6-12.
Adults will learn about Sigmund
Freud's use of Jewish humor in "Jokes
and Their Relation to The
Unconscious"; why there's so much
cross-dressing in Yiddish literature;
and how humor livened up the works
of Yiddish poet Itzik Manger.
On a lighter note, they will laugh
along with the Jewish comedians and
comedy writers of the '50s, and with
Jewish women humorists of all eras.
Stand-up comic Rabbi Bob Alper ("the
only rabbi in the country who regular-