Yiddish Book Center

Library and museum dedicated to Yiddish language and culture

The Yiddish Book Center occupies a striking wooden building shaped like a row of Eastern European shtetl houses, on the Hampshire College campus south of Amherst. Inside is a remarkable library, a small but thoughtful permanent exhibition on the history of Yiddish, and rotating exhibitions on Jewish life and literature.

The center also runs concerts, talks, the Wexler Oral History programme, and translation residencies. There is a good gift shop with books and recordings. Closed Saturdays; otherwise open daily.

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A story
In 1980, Hampshire College graduate Aaron Lansky realised that thousands of irreplaceable Yiddish books were being thrown into dumpsters by the children and grandchildren of European Jewish immigrants who had died without anyone to read them. Lansky's rescue mission has so far collected more than 1.5 million volumes — at the time, scholars had estimated that only 70,000 still existed.

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