Focus on Published Works
Jewish Publishing in America
Charles Madison, born in 1895, was born in Detroit, went to school at the University of Michigan, and completed his graduate studies at Harvard. He moved to New York to work in publishing, and worked for the Henry Holt company for thirty-eight years. Madison’s book Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing in American Culture looks into the publishing of books, newspapers and periodicals by American Jews and how the publishing impacted the American Jewish population and the broader American literary community.
The Yiddish Book Center
The Yiddish Book Center was founded in 1980 by Aaron Lansky, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student of Yiddish literature (and now the Center's president).
In the course of his studies, Lansky realized that untold numbers of irreplaceable Yiddish books—the primary, tangible legacy of a thousand years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe—were being discarded by American Jews unable to read the language of their Yiddish-speaking parents and grandparents. Lansky gathered a nationwide network of book collectors and launched an organized campaign to collect the world’s remaining Yiddish books.
When the Center began, experts estimated that 70,000 Yiddish books were still extant and recoverable. The Center’s young staff surpassed that number in six months and went on to recover more than a million volumes—some lovingly handed to them by their original owners, others rescued at the last minute from demolition sites and dumpsters. The center has found books in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, England, France, South Africa, Australia, and other countries around the world and continue to collect books today.
The majority of Yiddish books are now safe and accessible. The center aims to share with new generations the language, content, context, and literary and cultural progeny of the books they've saved. Initiatives include education, translation, publications, oral history, exhibits, and public programs.
In 2014, the Yiddish Book Center was awarded a National Medal for Museums and Libraries, the nation's highest medal conferred on a museum or library, at a White House ceremony.
The Jewish Publication Society (JPS), founded in 1888 is the preeminent publisher of books at the heart of Jewish culture in the English reading world. They are the oldest non-profit, non-denominational Jewish publisher in America with authors and readers covering the spectrum of Judaism and beyond.
JPS has published the JPS TANAKH, the most widely read English translation of the Hebrew Bible, Bible commentaries, and hundreds of classic books about Jewish history and thought. There are copies of this Tanakh in Zachs Hillel House at Trinity College.
Other book topics published by JPS include Rabbinic literature, ethics and philosophy, Jewish theology, lifecycles, the Holocaust, culture and art, American Jewry, Jewry in the diaspora, Israel, etc.
The Watkinson carries many books published by JPS, including Renegade: and Other Tales by Martha Wolfenstein, History of the Jews, Songs of a Wanderer by Philip M. Raskin, and Under the Sabbath Lamp: Stories of Our Time for Young and Old by Abram S. Isaacs.