Saving a culture through its books

99% of the people who visit the National Yiddish Book Center can't read the books, and neither could Aaron Lansky when at age 23 he set out to save thousands and thousands of priceless Yiddish books, books that had survived immigration across many countries and destruction by Hitler and Stalin. The older, Yiddish speakers were dying, and their treasures were being thrown out. Yiddish books were a portable homeland, and after Jews had a homeland, many people forgot them. His first visit to an elderly man involved sitting down with him to hear the story of each book. Stop at the home page and click on the brief film about the National Yiddish Book Center. (I was unable to embed the video.) I had tears in my eyes and marveled at the story of this young man who saved a culture that spanned hundreds of years and many cultures.

And now, through Internet Archive, you can visit too. The National Yiddish Book Center, founded in 1980, "is proud to offer online access to the full texts of nearly 11,000 out-of-print Yiddish titles. You can browse, read, download or print any or all of these books, free of charge. These titles were scanned under the auspices of our Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library, and have been made available online through the Internet Archive."

The index isn't difficult to use, the tags are self explanatory, and even if you don't read Yiddish, you can enjoy the pictures, like the 1926 vegetarian cook book I looked through.

I started my professional career (as a graduate assistant) unpacking and dusting off hundreds of PL 480 books in the bowels of the library at the University of Illinois. I can start sneezing from the memory of mold of the boxes and boxes of books brought to the vet library from the barn after grandpa died and no one knew what to do with his books. So I have a tender spot for this story. Many years ago I'd read about Lansky's efforts--probably before he had a building, and long before digitization made it possible for me to see his efforts. A truly amazing rescue work.