(JEWISH GROUP) As US Jews reckon with antisemitism uptick, a NY institution doubles down on education
Several college students browsed a satirical Yiddish magazine written for tenement-dwellers working in sweatshops in the early 20th century. Their classmates looked through historical matchbooks advertising kosher restaurants, while two Jewish students searched for photos of their ancestors in an interactive display that linked images of pre-Holocaust Jewish life to cities in Eastern Europe.
A guide for Manhattan’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research told the visiting students from the City University of New York’s Hunter College about the varieties of Yiddish theater. Some of the performances were “dramatically important and avant-garde,” he said, while others were “these mushy love stories.”
“It was basically reality TV for people before the age of television,” he said.
The trip provided a window into how one Jewish organization is navigating education in the post-October 7 environment, as Jewish communities grapple with the perceived failings of campaigns against antisemitism and the realization that, while Israel may have won on the battlefields, the Jewish nation lost the global war of public opinion.
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Yeah, good luck! 