Yiddish Book Center

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Aaron Lansky

Architect

Allen Moore & Associates

Builder

Kelleher Construction

Associate Architect

Winter Street Architects

Description

The Center had occupied a succession of spaces since its founding in 1980, including a factory loft, a red-brick schoolhouse, a spice warehouse, a roller rink, a nineteenth-century silk mill, and a defunct shopping mall. In 1991 the organization received word that it would have to vacate the borrowed schoolhouse that served as its headquarters.

Constructed, 1997

Lansky worked with board chair Myra Fein to secure a ten-acre site in a former apple orchard on the edge of Hampshire College’s campus in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Moore says '[The architecture] It needed to recall the shtetl [the iconic Jewish town of Eastern Europe]'. With classrooms, exhibit space, a small theater, a reading library, a bookstore, offices, and a central book repository, the building is bright, airy, and forward-looking—a singular style that Lansky describes as “heymish modern.”

Addition, 2009

Larry Kaplen arranged a leadership gift of $2 million from the Kaplen Foundation, and the planned addition was designated the Kaplen Family Building. . Tucked behind the original building, the new structure would be barely visible from the street but it would appear bigger inside than out. Its 22,000 square feet include the 350-seat Kligerman-Greenspun Performance Hall, the Klarman Student Center, and the Brechner Gallery. Also the Lief D. Rosenblatt Library—a state-of-the-art, fireproof facility that would provide long-term, climate-controlled storage for the Center’s core book collection.

Related People & Organizations

Yiddish Book Center

Images

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Images

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From the outside, the complex looks like a shtetl

The Eastern European design looks right at home in a New England apple orchard.

After visiting a house Moore had recently completed on Martha’s Vineyard, Lansky and Fein knew they had found their architect.

Balancing Jewish themes with New England sensibility.

A cluster of modest wood structures with shingled, stacked gable roofs and horizontal planked red cedar siding.

The building’s approach is designed to convey a sense of drama and anticipation

The Center adopted a kleyn vays tsigele—a little white goat—for its logo.

The goat—is a familiar figure in Jewish folklore, art, and literature, from “Chad Gadya,”

Main exhibit area, with children’s corner, foreground, and Yiddish literature on shelves, background.

Inside it’s a single space, built of Douglas fir, ash, Honduran mahogany.

The topography of the site had a significant influence on the design.

Drawings and documents

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Yiddish Newspaper Collection

'The Day' The National Jewish Daily

We are all Charlie

Franklin D. Roosevelt death featured in the Forward Newspaper 1945

End of the Second World War printed in the Yiddish newspaper - Forward

Mutters Gebet A Mothers Prayer concert poster

Of Interests to Jews

Russian Music

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