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1996 NYBC INTERNSHIP: VIRTUAL TOUR

From June 10th to August 1st, 1996, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate in NYBC's summer internship, learning the Yiddish language and discovering great works of literature.

Before I begin, let me emphasize that this page has not been created, produced, or authorized by neither the National Yiddish Book Center, nor any of its employees or associates. The opinions expressed here are my own, not NYBC's - this is not an advertisement for, nor any official description of, any part of NYBC, although they probably won't mind the free publicity.

Now, let's go for it!

To the right, we see our intrepid band of interns. Out of almost 100 applicants to this internship, only we ten students were picked - criteria ranged from GPA and college acti vities, to a desire to make social change and a willingness to get sweaty and dirty lifting heavy boxes for 9 hours a day!

The interns came from all over the nation and the world - Bulgaria, Argentina, Canada, and both coasts of the United States. Most of us were Jewish, but some weren't. Most were college students, though we had one college graduate and on e person in-between high school and college. Everyone, though, had an interest in both learning and preserving Yiddish language and culture.

Our tour begins in the Skinner Mansion, on the grounds of Mt. Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, MA. For 90 minutes every morning, we sat in Yiddish class and learned the language. So intense was our coursework that we completed a semester of Yiddish in less than 8 weeks!

There's me at the main desk. Don't I look important?

After class, it was off to shlep some books! Donors from all over the world send dozens of texts to us every day, and they're stored in a warehouse in Holyoke, MA ,until we interns get around to sorting them. Below is the "NYBC-m obile," aka "Rolling Thunder," aka "The Truck." It's the only vehicle big enough and bad enough to take literally tons of Yiddish books over to our Interim Annex in Hadley.

My fellow intern and good buddy Slavey and I are seen here enjoying a rare moment of calm, before we spend the next hour lifting boxes. Slavey may well be Prime Minister of Bulgaria some day, so watch out!

Below is an interior shot of the Holyoke warehouse. As you see, I'm not kidding when I say there are a LOT of books stored there. Close to 1.2 million, in fact - they take up two entire floors of the four-story building.

Below is another glimpse of the Holyoke warehouse. The strange contraption in the center is the last exisitng Yiddish Linotype, rescued from the NYC offices of The Forward. There aren't many peopl e still alive who know how to work these puppies, but not only is ours fully functional, but one of NYBC's staffers, Neil, learned how to operate it in his spare time!

But enough sight-seeing! There's work to be done! We used old-fashion human musclepower to load the boxes of books onto wooden palettes, and then worked pressure-driven ma nual forklifts called palette-jacks to move them around. Where did we move them? Down the freight elevator and out to the truck! To the right is a picture of Shelly and Sonya at the loading docks, securing the boxes of books for travel wi th cellophane wrap.

Once loaded on the truck (musclepower once more!), we drove them over to the Interim Annex in Hadley.

The front door is rather unassuming - people often think it's the New York Bagel Company, in fact. Besides, who would want to come out here, anyway? We worked in a windowless back room of a dead mall, where the air smelled constantly of cows, and the only food in walking distance was an overly expensive hippie health supermarket!

No one noticed NYBC there, and most likely no one will notice them go, because soon the Interim Annex will be dismantled fom this unseemly location and reassembled in a more beffiting place. The books and offices will be moved to a new b uilding that is in the process being constructed on the grounds of Hampshire College in Amherst. I've been to the site and the location is fantastic - the Yiddish books certainly deserve it!

This is the main office area of the Interim Annex, where dedicated staffers work 9 to 5 answering phones and proccessing orders for Yiddish texts. You'd be surprised how many people out there are interested - universities, libraries, collectors, and plain ordinary folks.

A clearinghouse, not a library, the NYBC sells the books it collects at very reasonable prices.

(for a catalogue and/or pricing, you can contact NYBC, I have their numbers and address at the end of this page)

Once the books were unloaded from the truck (Oy! By now our arms were falling off!), we unpacked and sorted them by the first letter of the author's last name. Since almost all of the books are written in Yiddish using the Hebrew alphabet, this was a challenging task at first, but we quickly got used to it.

This was far from mindless work - we had to always be alert for rare finds, such as those from Eastern Europe during the Nazi occupation, Palestine before the inception of Israel, or yiskor books that described now-destroyed shtetl towns in intricate detail. One of our rarest finds was a letter from Albert Einstein himself, enclosed in one of the books - click here to see it! Books that were religious in nature, or written in Hebrew, had to be shipped off to other organizations, so we had to be able to recognize either of such items. Luckily, the staff was always on hand and helpful if we had any questions.

Here, fellow intern Peter and I are preparing to shelve some titles we've sorted. I have great respect for library science majors now - keeping a collection organized is hard work! The shelves were catalogued according author's name, a lthough in a few cases the books were shelved by title.

Fear of heights can be an impediment at NYBC! Below, determined intern Dani is seen climbing up high to place a title where it belongs. She probably didn't appreciate me flashing a camera in her face as she did so!

When the shelves got too full, we simply boxed the duplicate books and shipped them back on the truck to Holyoke, where they're stored until NYBC needs them...and the whole story starts all over again!

For ten days in July, though, the story takes a special twist - NYBC offers a summer program every year to interested adults, where they can come to Mt. Holyoke Campus and participate in a ten day intensive program of Yiddish lectures, c lasses, and entertainment. Guess who helps out as tourguides, information dispensers, and porters for the particpants' luggage? The interns!

That's me in my cool intern outfit. The hat says trager, which means a person who lifts heavy things. Lest you think that the internship was all shlepping and no play, even with 9 hour days (14 hour days during the summer p rogram week) plus homework every evening and weekly Yiddish films, we still found time somewhere to go swimming in Puffer's Pond, hold more than a few parties (ever danced the macarena to Yiddish words? We did!), and dig some local concer ts.

Below is a somewhat more candid picture of the 1996 interns - just because we helped save a culture and got the educational experience of a lifetime doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun!

This concludes our tour of the NYBC 1996 Summer Internship. All photos were taken by me and my fellow interns using my 14 year old Vivitar Camera, except the two big B&W group shots, which were done by a professional photographer h ired by NYBC.

For "official" information on the internship or the NYBC in general, you can call them at (413) 535-1393, fax them at (413) 535-1007, or write to:

The National Yiddish Book Center

48 Woodbridge St.

South Hadley, MA. 01075

To visit the rest of my Yiddish Home-Page, click here.

To return to the top of this page, click here.

To send me email, click here.