I became interested in exhibiting books because I was captivated by the stories they told about Yiddish publishing, Yiddish readerships, and the reception of Yiddish over the span of five centuries of print. And as material objects, they can be breathtaking. 

I have curated and mounted three exhibitions of Yiddish books from collections at the University of Toronto and the Fisher Rare Book Libraries: “Discovering the Mame-loshn: The Hidden World of Yiddish at Robarts,” (2017) “Komets-alef: O! Back to School at the Yiddish Kheyder” (2018), and an adaptation of the kheyder exhibition for “Yiddish Spring” at the Canadian Language Museum.

Yiddish-related items such as books, newspapers, and photographs are given a second life by being digitized and made available to a wide public, which allows for accessibility far beyond what has ever been possible. Using interactive tools, digital technology can help to bridge the deep chasms generated by time and geographic distance. When asked about the future of the Yiddish book, Borden suggests a model of digital and interactive maps that is being applied to medieval manuscripts, which are also increasingly becoming digitized. Borden created a second and more ambitious exhibit at the Robarts Library involving Yiddish books, this time with an online component built in from the outset. “Komets-alef: o! Back to School at the Yiddish Kheyder”(2018) invites its viewers to become student participants in an imagined school. Online participants can download a Yiddish worksheet and open related images as well as audio files. The exhibit offers a model for accessible and engaging interactive encounters with Yiddish. Borden has further explored theoretical questions in the second incarnation of her exhibit, held at the Canadian Language Museum in the summer of 2019. The website page about the exhibit notes:

'Built into the concept of a Yiddish kheyder is a theoretical challenge that encourages us to think about space. As we know, learn-ing and teaching Yiddish was not the express purpose of the traditional kheyder, where instruction instead largely emphasized liturgical and Biblical texts; as Max Weinreich wrote, “No one was ever flogged for not knowing Yiddish.” This Yiddish kheyder, then, is a new creation. It is a Yiddish space rooted in history, but not found in historical space or time. Rather, this Yiddish kheyder is a creation for this space and this time, inviting visitors to reflect on the fact that increasingly, 21st century Yiddish spaces have moved from the street, the home, and the shul into the classroom, the library, and the museum.'

Borden’s vision dramatically alters concepts of place in relation to what Yiddish is and what it can be. Here Yiddish books exist as mate-rial culture, and as such represent objects in an evolving relationship with people over time and space.

Rebecca Margolis, Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023, 225-227).