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Aaron Lansky, author of Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
The Story
The Amram Scholar Series and the Edlavitch-Tyser Family Relations Forum invite you to come and hear Aaron Lansky, author of Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, speak on Sunday, November 11 at 10:30 a.m. 
Lansky, a MacArthur Fellow, was a 23-year old graduate student when he became alarmed at the fact that Yiddish books and Yiddish culture were disappearing. Books – and a language—that had survived years of persecution were being tossed into trash bins by an older generation who thought no one cared, and a younger generation who had no idea of their value or meaning. Taking what he thought would be a short leave of absence from his studies, Mr. Lansky set out to rescue these books.
For weeks and months, Lansky and his co-workers traveled the United States, rescuing priceless Jewish books from synagogues, basements, attics and even dumpsters. Along the way, they met a colorful array of people, listened to their stories and gave them hope that perhaps the next generation would pass on their language and culture. This led to the formation of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1980, which Mr. Lansky continues to lead in its ongoing efforts to save Yiddish language and culture. To date, the Center has recovered 1.5 million volumes, with new additions every week. The Center’s achievement has been hailed as “the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history.” This promises to be an interesting and inspirational lecture about Mr. Lansky’s ongoing adventures and the Center’s work to reunite our community with our literary and cultural heritage.
http://yiddishbookcenter.org/
 The Book
Filled with inspiring and hilarious tales, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books is a riveting story about Aaron Lansky’s travels as he and a team of volunteers crisscrossed America, retrieving Yiddish books from dusty attics, crumbling basements, and dumpsters. With 75,000 copies now in print, it is a collective love song to brilliant Yiddish writers -- from Mendele to Sholem Aleichem to I.B. Singer -- and their lasting cultural relevance.
Selected Reviews
"Lansky’s allegiance isn’t merely to words on paper. It’s to the values that those words, and the people who lived them through centuries of oppression, represent. And his persistence in the face of—at least at first—almost universal indifference has turned out to be more than the mitzvah of one idealistic—one might say meshuge—man. Near the end of Outwitting History, Lansky quotes Singer as saying, 'Yiddish has not yet said its last word.' Thanks in part to Lansky, he’s probably right." - Washington City Paper
"Aaron Lansky is the Yiddish Indiana Jones. The founder and president of the National Yiddish Book Center, Lansky has been an intrepid archaeologist and adventurer in his decades-long effort to find and save Yiddish books around the world before they are destroyed or lost forever. With scarce resources but aided by enthusiastic volunteers, he has emptied dumpsters in the rain, salvaged books from forgotten basements, emptied libraries on the brink of being closed, and crossed international borders amid danger." - The Jewish Week
“This is a synchronistic year for American Jewry. It is 350 years since the first Jews arrived in North America. This year is also the 100th anniversary of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Laureate who helped give Yiddish at least a temporary infusion of CPR. And now Lansky has written his memoirs, precisely titled Outwitting History. It's a marvelous yarn, loaded with near-calamitous adventures and characters as memorable as Singer creations.” - The New York Post
“Aaron Lansky, 49-year-old founder of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, has kept the once-flickering flame of Eastern European Jewish culture burning brightly in America and throughout the world for more than 25 years, while projecting boundless good humor, chutzpah, and an almost elfin lightness of being." - The Jewish Ledger
“Aaron Lansky is a man on a mission. And his quarter-century of dedication to finding and preserving Yiddish books has become a strikingly successful cultural rescue project... His book, Outwitting History, recounts his experiences with passion, pathos and humor and reads like a rousing adventure story. - The Minneapolis Star Tribune
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