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Rosenberg of Farmington Hills Kosher Catering Under supervision of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis 10/29 2004 *************************** 86 903150 A aron Lansky is the Yiddish Indiana Jones. The founder and president of the National Jewish Book Center, Lansky has been an intrepid archaeologist and adventur- er in his decades-long effort to find and save Yiddish books around the world before they are destroyed or lost forever. With scarce resources but aided by enthusiastic volunteers, he has emptied dumpsters in the rain, salvaged books from forgotten basements, emptied libraries on the brink of being closed and crossed international borders amidst danger. This 49-year old gentle soul, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" fel- lowship, has also sipped tea and eaten cakes and homemade delicacies across America, listening to stories from aging Jews about to give up their collections of Yiddish books, people entrusting him with their inheritance. In his first book, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books (Algonquin Books; $24.95), Lans earnestly tells his story, from his initial study of Yiddish as an undergraduate to his building an institution described by Esquire magazine as "the most grass- roots Jewish organization in America," with a state-of-the-art facility on the campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. In 25 years, they have collected more than 1.5 million Yiddish books and how have 35,000 members. The book's title is drawn from a response given by the Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich. When asked why he persevered in teaching in Yiddish after half of the world's Yiddish-speaking population was killed in the Shoah, he said, "Because Yiddish has magic; it will outwit history" When Lansky was a student, he and his classmates had trouble finding copies of the Yiddish books they want- ed to read. He began searching old bookstores and synagogues and realized that indeed there were many Yiddish books in private collections, whose readers were dying off and leaving them to children and grandchildren who couldn't read the language. Soon after beginning his graduate studies, Lansky, then 23, decided to take a leave of absence "to save the world's Yiddish books before it was too late." Although Lansky had the passions of an antiquarian book collector, he hardly looked the role. After the word got out about his efforts, he would show up in jeans, driving an old dented truck, ready to cart away as many books as people would part with. Often, the books were given one at a time, with a tale about each. Everywhere he went, he was kissed. In an interview, Lansky says that peo- ple poured out their hearts in what he came to see as a "ritual of cultural transmission." He would prop up his tape recorder on the table between the gefilte fish and chrayn, horseradish. Even when people asked not to be taped, he sometimes would turn the tape recorder on in his pocket, ever aware of the historical responsibility of remembering their words. From his first days on the road, he had the sense that he was witnessing a moment he would need to write about. In the name of efficiency, he would travel with two colleagues; 0 7 one would be the designated eater, left sitting at the table while the others hauled books. Among their early donors were Marjorie Guthrie (the wife of Woody and whose mother was a Yiddish writer), Abbie Hoffman's mother and Allen Ginsberg's stepmother. Sometimes, Lansky would get mid- dle-of-the-night emergency calls regard- ing institutions about to throw out their books, and he and his team would race down in a truck. Once, while emptying the books out of a Bronx cul- tural library, they enlisted an assembly line of local kids to help them. He also writes of missions to Cuba and Russia. Once the center collected a signifi- cant number of books, their aim was never to keep them but rather to dis- tribute them to schools and libraries. And now, their efforts extend beyond that, to sharing the knowledge inside of the books to a wide audience. Their recent projects include creating a digital library, a summer internship for college students (they get 100 appli- cants for every spot, and this year will