By Steven Lasky, New York
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I created the virtual (internet only) Museum of Family History in the hopes of doing my part to honor and preserve the memory of our Jewish families and culture for the present and future generations. The site is open for all to see and welcomes contributions of material from anyone.

I am writing to you so that I may introduce you to the "Yiddish World" aspect of my museum
Much of this part of my museum is devoted to the Yiddish theatre, both the acting and the writers of Yiddish plays. Recently I instituted a "Great Artists Series" to honor those Jewish artists who have made an extraordinary contribution to the world through the scope and quality of their work.

Online are exhibitions about Bialystok-born artist Max Weber, created with the cooperation of his daughter. Also, there is an exhibition about Yiddish playwright David Pinski, created with the help of his grandson and his wife. Here you will find various audio clips, one of which is part of a 1954 interview with a Haifa radio station.

I am placing online my exhibition about Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theatre, and a serialized form, i.e. several chapters per month, the only known biography of Maurice Schwartz, as written by the late Martin Boris.

There are links to the Weber, Pinski and Schwartz exhibitions on the main "Great Artists Series" page . You will find coming attraction pages for the future Richard Tucker and Al Jolson exhibitions. If anyone has anything to add to these exhibitions, whether they be of a personal recollection or of a material nature, please contact me. The Jolson exhibition will be a rather large one, replete with many photos as well as audio and video clips from films he starred in. Also you will be able to view clips from documentaries made about his life, as well as from newsreels.

There is more that can be found within my "Yiddish World," including exhibitions of the MIKT, a Yiddish acting troupe that entertained in the DP camps post-WWII, an exhibition about Luba Kadison and Joseph Buloff (including more audio clips of interviews), the Vilna Troupe, the Habima in New York, and much more. You can see video previews to a dozen documentaries with a Jewish theme in the "Screening Room.

There is really a great deal more that can be said about the Museum’s “Yiddish World,” as well as what is contained in the rest of the museum, e.g. about the Holocaust, Jewish Life in Eastern Europe, immigration, the Jewish experience living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, etc. I believe that the Museum displays the largest number of photos of Holocaust memorials anywhere, and more are added as they are received. The Museum’s ”Cemetery Project” helps researchers learn more about their ancestors by containing and making available data on over 210,000 burials located in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Links to everything on the site can be found on the Site Map page. Please contact me if you have any material you think might be interesting to my Museum visitors/readers.