YIVO launches the Ruth Rubin Legacy: an online sound archive of Yiddish Folksongs

Apr 4, 2018



(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) announces the launch of a new online-exhibition highlighting the field recordings of over 1,500 Yiddish lider (songs) made by renowned vocalist and scholar, Ruth Rubin. Performed by some of the most extraordinary traditional singers of the 20th century, including Rubin herself, the 78rpm acetate discs, reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes recorded by Rubin between 1946 and the 1970s have been painstakingly re-assembled and are made accessible in an easy to use online platform for the first time. In addition to a state of the art search portal in which field recordings can be browsed by song title, genre, performer, and more, the exhibition includes a variety of materials including lectures, concerts, radio interviews, videos, and rare and unpublished manuscripts, photographs, and more.

The Ruth Rubin Legacy is hosted on YIVO Online Exhibitions, a website of online exhibitions showcasing treasures from YIVO’s world-renowned archival and library collections. The Ruth Rubin Legacy is the second exhibition on the site, joining The Strashun Library of Vilna: Rescued from the Ashes. Forthcoming exhibitions will explore East European Jewish history and culture, Yiddish language and literature, American Jewish history, the Holocaust, and many other topics related to the Jewish experience. Through YIVO Online Exhibitions and YIVO’s other digital initiatives, YIVO is working to put all its materials online to be accessed worldwide.

Find the website at exhibitions.yivo.org/RuthRubin.

About YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our global outreach and enable us to share our vast resources. The YIVO Archives contains more than 23 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for such study in the world. yivo.org