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16
September 27 • 2012
metro
A Passion For Preservation
The savior of irreplaceable Yiddish texts sees a similar need
to digitize the 70-year archives of the Detroit Jewish News.
Bill Carroll
Contributing Writer
E
ich farshtay Yiddish. Eich vill
freggen dere a few froggehs. (I
understand Yiddish. I want to
ask you a few questions.)
That's about as far as the Yiddish
portion of the interview went with
Yiddish maven Aaron Lansky before
we decided to save time and converse
in English.
Lansky, an internationally known
Yiddish expert, is on a personal cru-
sade to save the centuries-old Yiddish
culture and language from extinction
in the dumpsters and landfills of his-
tory.
He and his associates are doing this
mainly through a cultural institu-
tion called the National Yiddish Book
Center in Amherst, Mass. The center
safeguards a collection of about 1.5
million Yiddish books rescued from
individuals and institutions world-
wide — original Yiddish novels, plays,
poetry, periodicals and even sheet
music. Most of the materials have been
digitized so that casual readers or seri-
ous researchers can access them online
through their own computers.
Lansky will relate his amazing story
during a "Conversation with Aaron
Lansky" Thursday, Oct. 18, at the
Berman Center for the Performing Arts
in West Bloomfield, sponsored by the
Detroit Jewish News Foundation.
Preserving JN Pages
Proceeds will benefit the foundation,
a nonprofit entity that supports the
educational mission of the Jewish News.
The foundation is in the midst of its
own digitization project — the preser-
vation and digitization of every page of
content that has ever appeared in the
Jewish News since its founding in 1942,
an estimated 260,000 pages.
"I'm glad to return to Detroit to
provide background on our National
Yiddish Book Center and update every-
one on the progress we're making," said
Lansky, 56, speaking from his office
at the book center on the campus of
Hampshire College.
"It's just common sense for the
Jewish News to be digitizing all of its
back issues, the same basic reason
why we undertook this project at our
book center," Lansky pointed out.
"Newspapers don't last forever; they
eventually turn yellow and crumble.
Yiddish archivist Aaron Lansky will speak at the Berman Center on Oct. 18.
And reading the pages on microfilm is
often difficult. This is the digital age in
America, and newspapers should take
advantage of it. The Jewish News is on
the right track."
Detroit Jewish News publisher Arthur
Horwitz pointed out the similarities
of the book center and Jewish News
Foundation digitization project. "Aaron
Lansky and his people at the National
Yiddish Book Center are making
Yiddish relevant again, bringing it
alive for future generations of Jews in
America and globally," he said.
"We're striving to keep the pages of
the past issues of the Jewish News alive.
The newspaper's content is a true com-
munity asset and a detailed record of
its history. There are literally tens of
thousands of names captured on its
pages.
"Once digitized, the content will
be available through a Google-style
search engine that people can access
from personal computers. The content
will help inform and enlighten current
and future community leaders in their
decision-making."
Leave Of Absence?
Digitization, which technically means
capturing an analog signal in digital
form, wasn't too well known in 1980,
when Lansky was a 24-year-old gradu-
ate student studying Eastern European
Jewish history and literature at
Montreal's McGill University.
"I got so interested in Yiddish that
I took a two-year 'leave of absence' to
work on the subject more deeply. Now,
.32 years later, I'm still on leave," Lansky
mused, "but I have three honorary doc-
torate degrees, and I've written a book."
Lansky realized that many irreplace-
able Yiddish books, the primary legacy
of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Eastern
Europe, were being discarded by
American-born Jews unable to read the
language of their own Yiddish-speaking
parents and grandparents.
He founded the National Yiddish
Book Center and organized a nation-
wide network of zamlers (volunteer
book collectors), launching a campaign
to save the world's remaining Yiddish
books before it was too late. The center
was housed in several older locations
until a new facility was built in 1997.
"Books came in from countries
around the world, and others have
been lovingly handed in person to our
volunteers by their original owners,"
said Lansky. "We continue to col-
lect thousands of volumes each year.
Around the time that we started the
book center, many Jewish leaders had
insisted that 'Yiddish was dead, but
30,000 people disagreed and signed up
as our members."
Young Jews Take Over
Yiddish was alive and well from about
1800 to the 1950s, when it was the
expressive language of Jews every-
where and most of the Yiddish books
were written, but then it was replaced
by English and other languages after
World War II, Lansky said. "But the
United States is more multicultural
now, and the younger Jewish genera-