{"id":909,"date":"2017-05-23T17:16:24","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T17:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/?p=909"},"modified":"2026-05-14T19:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:30:18","slug":"lucy-dawidowicz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/literature\/lucy-dawidowicz\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucy Dawidowicz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucy Dawidowicz: Yiddish New York<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lucy Dawidowicz is one of the most well known scholars of Jewish and Yiddish history. Born in the United States, she made a journey that many Jewish women did not, emigrating from New York to Vilna, Poland, to study at YIVO during the beginning of World War II. After the unsafe conditions forced Dawidowicz to return to New York, she began working at the YIVO that was promptly founded on the East Side by Polish Jews who had fled to America. The YIVO attempted to preserve the Yiddish, Jewish culture that was being actively destroyed throughout the course of the war in Europe. This mission became Dawidowicz\u2019s life work and her career. Her contribution of bringing Yiddish culture to New York cannot be understated. By reading her memoir From That Place and Time<\/em> one can easily demarcate the places of importance for the flourishing of the Yiddish, Jewish culture in New York during the first half of the 20th<\/sup> Century. ((3))<\/p>\n

Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Scenes from 1918-1919, showing some of the earliest years of Camp Boiberik, part of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Judaism as a formal religion was never a big part of Dawidowicz\u2019s life growing up (she informs the reader that she never attended synagogue), cultural Judaism was a prominent feature of her upbringing. During her younger years, Dawidowicz\u2019s parents enrolled her in a Yiddish School alongside her regular education. In describing the school, Dawidowicz\u2019s states, \u201cIt sponsored and supervised a network of about twenty schools with an enrollment of some 2,000 pupils in New York City\u2026They [the schools] were the products of secularist Jewish ideologies\u201d. It was here that Yiddish was first introduced to Lucy in scholarly context. The Institute was founded in 1918 and lasted until the 1970s and was responsible for supplementing American secular education with Yiddish education for many children throughout New York City. ((3)) ((4))<\/p>\n

Hunter College High School<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Hunter College High School; Dawidowicz graduated in 1932<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an intelligent adolescent, Dawidowicz\u2019s attended a high school that would challenge her. When speaking of it, she quotes, \u201cIn 1928, I entered Hunter College High School, then an all-girls\u2019 elite high school, known for its rigorous curriculum\u201d. Founded as an independent high school in 1903, the school has served to educate exceptional young women since its inception. The school boasts a core curriculum with course flexibility for the latter half of high school for all students. Included in this core curriculum was four years of English courses, which undoubtedly contributed to Dawidowicz\u2019s love of literature and writing.<\/p>\n

Sholem Aleichem Mitlshul<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photo of Lucy Dawidowicz, also featured on the cover of her memoir<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Upon entering high school at Hunter College High School, Dawidowicz\u2019s also enrolled in the Sholem Aleichem Mitlshul, a continuation of her Yiddish education at the Folk Institute. In addition to normal classes, Lucy attended Yiddish classes here on Saturdays and Sundays during her time in high school. Speaking of the school she says, \u201cThe Mitlshul was where most of us made friendships that would last a lifetime and where romances blossomed into enduring marraiges\u201d. The Mitlschul was also where Dawidowicz truly realized her love for Yiddish, Jewish folk culture and the strength of the Jewish identity, leading her to her life\u2019s work and true passions. ((3)) ((1))<\/p>\n

Hunter College<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Hunter College, where Dawidowicz earned her undergraduate degree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After high school, Dawidowicz furthered her academic interests, mainly in literature and writing, at Hunter College, entering in the September 1932. Hunter was founded as an all-women\u2019s college in 1870 and is one of the oldest public colleges in the country. While pursuing her degree, Dawidowicz was also an active member of the Young Communist League on campus, which she claimed, \u201cWas my way of righting the world\u2019s wrongs and working for a society in which the Jews could thrive, for a world free from hatred and prejudice\u201d. Through her study of literature and writing, as well as the cultivation of her activism through her work with the YCL on campus, Dawidowicz truly became a woman who would dedicate herself to a cause in which she strongly believed.((3)) ((1))<\/p>\n

Columbia University<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Columbia University, where Dawidowicz discovered her displeasure with traditional learning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Upon graduating from Hunter during the middle of the Great Depression, Dawidowicz could not find a fulfilling job, so she took a job at a department store. This monotonous job was not at all the type of meaningful work that Dawidowicz had hoped to pursue after graduation. Seeing that her spirits were down, Dawidowicz\u2019s mother suggested she enroll in a masters program. Lucy states, \u201cSomehow she managed to scrape together enough money and I enrolled at Columbia University in September 1936, choosing courses on the art of poetry, the aesthetics of poetry, and the philosophy of art\u201d. However, this type of writing no longer held the allure it once did for Dawidowicz and she promptly dropped out. She returned a year later, this time enrolling in history courses. While in these courses, she began to think seriously about the greater world around her and the plight of Jews in Europe. With the help of her advisor at both Columbia and her Mitlschul, she decided to embark on a journey to YIVO in Vilna, Poland.((3))<\/p>\n

YIVO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Leaders of the New York YIVO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Of all the places in New York that Dawidowicz speaks about throughout the course of her memoir, the YIVO was by far the most important place in her life. Nowhere did she feel more intellectually and personally fulfilled than she did while at YIVO in Vilna. After having to leave Poland because of the war, Dawidowicz took a civil service job in Albany, which could not compare to the work she had done while in Poland. When she is offered a job in the newfound YIVO in New York, a continuation of the YIVO in Vilna, she is overjoyed. The YIVO occupied two locations during the time that Dawidowicz worked there. The first was in lower Manhattan, at 425 Lafayette Street. The building was shabby and run down, however this did not prevent the employees from setting out a rigorous agenda for the center. As Dawidowicz describes it, \u201cWeinreich had laid out a formidable program for the reorganized YIVO. He wanted to step up the activities of its research sections; enlarge the library; publish besides the YIVO-Bleter<\/em>, a news bulletin and a linguistic journal; inaugurate an Aspirantur; extended YIVO\u2019s constituency beyond its immigrant base; and develop contacts with the non-Jewish academic world\u201d. Here, the YIVO worked to spread and preserve Yiddish culture, as well as to keep up with the news of the war and to attempt to collect artifacts from the YIVO that had been left behind in Poland. According to the YIVO archives website the mission was to \u201cinclude documentation of the life and death of the destroyed communities of Europe\u2026With the passing of time, the YIVO Archives became a center for the documentation of both East European and American Jewry\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1942, the YIVO moved uptown to West 123rd<\/sup> Street. The move uptown was necessary to expand the workspace and productivity of the YIVO, but also, as Dawidowicz quotes, \u201cthe YIVO\u2019s uptown move symbolized its distinctiveness from immigrant Yiddish institutions in their shabby downtown quarters\u201d. The new location was located adjacent to both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Columbia University. With this move, Weinreich, Lucy\u2019s boss and colleague, strove to \u201cdemonstrate to educated American Jew and to the community of American scholars that Yiddish was not just a vernacular of plain folk and women\u2026but was a tongue fit for scholars and intellectuals\u201d. It was this intermarriage of scholasticism and Yiddish culture that became Dawidowicz\u2019s life work. The research and scholarship she began while working at YIVO translated into her later work as a professor and academic scholar of Yiddish. Without her work at the YIVO, it is unclear whether Dawidowicz would have pursued the same career path that she eventually chose, and this institution was a pivotal place in her life. ((3)) ((5))<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAbout: History\u201d. Hunter College Campus Schools. Hunter Schools, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017. <<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.hunterschools.org\/history><\/p>\n

\u201cAbout Hunter\u201d. Hunter College. Hunter College, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017. <<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.hunter.cuny.edu\/abouthunter><\/p>\n

Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time<\/em>. W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.<\/p>\n

\u201cSholem Aleichem Folk Institute\/Workman Circle Shuln.\u201d University of Texas, n.d. Web. 25<\/p>\n

Apr. 2017. <http:\/\/www.laits.utexas.edu\/gottesman\/sholworkman.html><\/p>\n

\u201cYivo Archives in New York\u201d. YIVO Archives. YIVO Archives, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017<\/p>\n

<http:\/\/www.yivoarchives.org\/index.php?p=pages\/yivoarchives_in_new_york><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucy Dawidowicz: Yiddish New York Lucy Dawidowicz is one of the most well known scholars of Jewish and Yiddish history. Born in the United States, she made a journey that many Jewish women did not, emigrating from New York to Vilna, Poland, to study at YIVO during the beginning of World War II. After the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-people","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9teox-eF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":958,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}