#Newsflash | Yiddish Is Alive and Kicking in Queens
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Are you interested in Yiddish literature?
There’s a great place in Long Island City. It’s a bit of a schlep, but once you get there, you’ll be so verklempt that you’ll kvell.
The CYCO Yiddish Book Center is on the seventh floor of an industrial building at 38-51 21st St. The 66-foot-by-25-foot space boasts 14-foot-high ceilings and about 100,000 books, journals, comics, brochures, and a cooking video. Publications run from 1870 to the present and include categories such as Argentina, Eastern Europe, and Brooklyn as well as theater, history, fiction, and comedy.
You know. Isaac Bashevis Singer. Shloyme Ettinger. Yisroel Aksenfeld. Miryam Ulinover. Moyshe Nadir. Beyle Schaechter Gottesman. Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. All in Yiddish.
CYCO (pronounced “Tsiko”) opened in Manhattan in 1938. It was a safe space for debate and idea-sharing among Jewish writers during difficult times back then. Over time, it bounced from 78th Street to 21st Street before landing in its present home, a stone’s throw from the Queens-Manhattan Tunnel’s entrance/exit, in 2011.
Go there to read on site or make copies, but nobody can take out books. A few items are for sale, and the metal-shelved center serves as an event space and publisher with about 300 copyrights.
There’s an old saying about Yiddish: It was dying 1,000 years ago, and it will continue to die for another 1,000 years.
This applies to CYCO, which has had good and bad times. However, the future looks bright, thanks to its volunteer director, Hy Wolfe, who’s delivered stability since taking over in the 1990s. A mentsh and a bit of a meshugenah, this son of Holocaust survivors grew up in Brownsville, speaking Yiddish with his mishpocha. He’s a lifelong actor/entertainer who’s also been involved in the Yiddish National Theatre Folksbiene, Hebrew Actors’ Foundation, and Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center in the Bronx.
Currently, CYCO is visitable by appointment only. Contact Wolfe (above holding “No Shmaltz!,” a Yiddish cooking video he made with actress Shifra Lerer, who’s buried in Flushing’s Mount Hebron Cemetery) at HyMoWo@aol.com or 212.991.8676.
Editor’s note: Google Maps doesn’t fully understand Queens yet. The address is far south, off Van Dam Street.
Images: Rob MacKay