Genealogists who are comfortable in Hebrew and Yiddish should not fail
to check out the Vaad Hayeshivot
records at the YIVO in New
York City. The YIVO is one of five major
institutions of Jewish Scholarship,
History and Art that are physically located -- all conveniently under
one roof -- at the Center for Jewish History on 15 West 16th Street in
NYC. [The other four are: The American Jewish Historical Society, The
American Sephardi Federation, The Leo Baeck Institute (for German
Jewry), and the Yeshiva University Museum.] Note:
These Vaad HaYeshivot
records have nothing whatsoever to do with the Landsmanshaftn records
that are also housed at the YIVO. The Landsmanshaftn
are/were American
(mainly New York City based) organizations,
whereas the Vaad HaYeshivot
functioned in towns located in the area surrounding the European
Vilna.
Today Vilna is called Vilnius, and is the capital city of
Lithuania. During the time of the Vaad
HaYeshivot, it was known by its Polish name, Wilno
The Vaad Hayeshivot in Vilna
was something
like the Jewish Federations or
the United Jewish Appeal that
we have here in
America. The Vaad would
collect money, and distribute it to various
yeshivas located in towns in the area surrounding Vilna. The YIVO was
fortunate enough to salvage these records, and
store them in its archives.
The YIVO has not yet digitized these hand-written documents. I
understand that they are presently (August 2004) being microfilmed.
These Vaad Hayeshivot records
are a
treasure-trove of information for genealogists. They contain reports of
monies collected at various appeals made throughout the year. Each
report contains the name of the town (shtetl), name of the synagogue,
name of each contributor, and the amount of his contribution, and the
date that the appeal (collection) took place. These records are mostly
on printed forms that have been filled out by hand. And they are
written in Yiddish and Hebrew. The YIVO refers to these as Contributor Records.
I believe that these collections were made from around 1924-25 through
1940. (When I first checked these reports out years ago, the YIVO was
located
in the beautiful Vanderbilt mansion on 1048 Fifth Avenue at East 86th
Street in NYC.)
I examined these records again this past August 04, 2003. (Now the YIVO
is in its new home at the Center for
Jewish History at 15 West 16th Street, NYC
10011, where it has been since early 1999.)
Besides the aforesaid Contributor
Records, the Vaad HaYeshivot
archives also contain a plethora of
correspondence
between various local Rabbis and the Vaad's
central
office (headquarters), which was located in Vilna (Wilno).
On some of the stationery of the Vaad
HaYeshivot, the following Polish heading appeared:
Stow. WAAD
HAJSZYWOS Wilno ul. Wielka 47. Tel. 570 Skrzynka poczt. 102
The correspondence that I personally have read was mostly from the
local Rabbi of my ancestral town Krasne
(Krasnoye nad Usza). His name was Rabbi
Chayim-Yitzchok Czarny (Chaim-Yits'khok Tsharny, HaShem Yikom
Damo (may G-d avenge his brutal
murder by the Nazis in the Krasne labor camp!).
This correspondence was almost exclusively written in Hebrew, NOT
Yiddish - and the handwriting was terrible (lopetes mit kotcheres).
Furthermore, the Hebrew was replete with arcane roshei-teyvos /
abbreviations -- as has been the vogue among the learned Rabbinical
elite till
this very day.
Click here
to see a JPEG image of a sample letter from the YIVO Vaad HaYeshivot
archives. This Hebrew typewritten letter is dated 6/15/1932. It is
written to a Reuven Gelperyn in Krasne,
extending condolences to Reuven on the loss of his father, the "honored
philanthropist Moshe ben Yisroel, z"l, who passed away on 2 Sivan
5692
[June 6, 1932]."
Click here to see Contributor-Lists showing proceeds
from appeals (collections) made
in two Krasne Synagogues in 1932. Text below is from the
website of the Yivo Library.
Collecting materials documenting the life and creativity of East
European Jewry has been a major focus of YIVO's mission since the
Institute's inception in 1925. During the fifteen years of YIVO's
existence in Vilna, the Institute gathered an extensive array of
records, manuscripts, artifacts, and field notes thanks to the efforts
of an international network of professional scholars and amateur
zamlers (collectors). This mission has continued in America in the
decades since World War II. The YIVO Archives is one of the world's
most important repositories for materials documenting many aspects of
modern Jewish history and culture.
The approximately 1,400 collections (record groups) that make up the
YIVO Archives occupy over 10,000 linear feet. These collections consist
of manuscripts, correspondence, and printed materials. The Archives
also holds photographs, films, videotapes, sound recordings, art works,
and artifacts, most of which have been organized into the following
special collections: Music Collections, Sound Archive, Photographic
Archive, Film Archive, and Art and Artifacts Collection.
The primary languages of the documents are Yiddish, English, Hebrew,
Russian, Polish, French, and German. The collections, while covering a
wide range of topics relating to Jewish history and culture around the
world, concentrate on four main areas: East European Jewish history;
history of the Jews in the United States; Yiddish language, literature,
and culture (including significant collections on the Yiddish theater
and Yiddish press); and the Holocaust.
Major Collections at the YIVO
For a detailed listing of collections in the YIVO Archive, consult the
Guide to the YIVO Archives,
edited by Fruma Mohrer and Marek Web (YIVO
and M.E. Sharpe, 1998). This publication can be consulted in the
Reading Room at the Center for Jewish
History or at other libraries. It
can also be purchased from Amazon.com and other booksellers.
Information about YIVO's Archival collections can also be obtained from
the web-site of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections.
Overview => Major Collections => Organizational Records
Organizational Records—A Selective List
American Jewish Committee, 1918-1970s (RG 347)
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,
1919-1950 (RG 335)
American ORT Federation, 1922-1960 (RG 380)
Day-Morning Journal, 1922-1972 (RG 639)
Educational Alliance, 1888-1968 (RG 312)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society - HIAS, ca.
1900-ca. 1970 (RG 245)
Rabbinical School and Teachers' Seminary,
Vilna, 1847-1917 (RG 24)
United Hebrew Trades, 1899-1979 (RG 434) Vaad
Hayeshivot (Vilna), 1924-1940 (RG 25)
Workmen's Circle, 1893-1972 (RG 575)
The YIVO Archives also holds the records of over 700 landsmanshaftn
(immigrant mutual aid societies), most of which were collected in the
course of a community outreach project from 1979 to 1983.