Aaron Lansky

Who is Aaron Lansky?

Aaron Lansky is the founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, an organization he created to help salvage Yiddish language publications. When he began saving books in the early 1980s, most experts believe that there were fewer than 70,000 Yiddish volumes extant. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989 for his work.

He is also the author of Outwitting History, an autobiographical account of how Lansky saved the Yiddish books of the world, from the 1970s to the present day. It won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award.