A $1 million endowment brings plans for an institute for Yiddish studies — including creation of a Yiddish culture and performing arts curriculum at the University of Wisconsin — closer to completion.
The endowment donated by Sherry Mayrent and Carol Master will help fund the Mosse/Weinstein Center’s development of a one-of-a kind university-based Yiddish culture center, which will be named the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture and focus on the performing arts, said Pamela Potter, director of the Center for Jewish Studies and professor of music.
“There was always an interest in Yiddish culture, but it was never centralized,” she said. “We saw there was an interest, so we had some momentum to really get this thing going.”
Through the institute, faculty will provide a new curriculum focused on subjects like history, language, dance, folk art and music, and will eventually offer a new Yiddish track within the Jewish studies major, Potter said.
In addition to the endowment, Mayrent donated her collection of about 6,000 recordings of Jewish music spanning from 1895 to 1955 to the UW Mills Music Library, Potter said.
At the library, the recordings will be catalogued and available to the public for research, she said.
“We expect that we are going to see more groups interested and using the collection for resources, research and reviving music, and performing it again,” she said.
The collection will be overseen by the director of the institute, Henry Sapoznik, who will arrive at UW in January 2011 to finalize details of the institute, Potter said.
She added planning for the institute began last spring when Sapoznik — a performer of Yiddish music and founder of a Yiddish cultural arts program, KlezKamp — visited UW as part of the Art Institute for Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program.
Impressed by Madison’s reception to his stay, Sapoznik and donators Mayrent and Master decided to move their Yiddish folk arts organization from New York City to a permanent institutional program for Yiddish culture in an academic setting at UW.
During his semester-long stay, Sapoznik performed a KlezKamp Roadshow featuring Yiddish culture concerts, workshops, performances and dances for the Madison campus and community, said art department professor Douglas Rosenberg.
Rosenberg said about 300 people from five states participated in the event.
“People from the community turned out in droves to take classes and study with these master musicians,” he said. “It was really something.”
As a part of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture, Sapoznik’s annual five-day KlezKamp cultural arts event in the Catskill Mountains in New York will also offer a summer version in Madison.
Rosenberg, who has participated in the event, said it presents a uniquely compressed history of Yiddish culture through music, crafts, storytelling and dancing that is not offered elsewhere.
He said the institute would offer UW students an opportunity to experience this culture.
“(Currently) the only way to get this is to go to KlezKamp in New York,” he said. “But to have it in your own backyard is unheard of, it’s amazing really.”
