Ruth Rubin
Folklorist who preserved Yiddish songs from Holocaust survivors.
Ruth Rubin was born Rivke Rosenblatt on September 1, 1906, in Khotin, Bessarabia. She grew up speaking Yiddish, English, and French. Her parents had moved to Canada from Bessarabia, then part of the Russian Empire, and she had at least one sister, Esther. She attended public schools and the Peretz Shule, a secular Yiddish school, where hearing Sholom Aleichem speak in 1915 left a deep impression. In 1924, she moved to New York, studying music and attending night school at Hunter College while working as a secretary and stenographer.
Around 1935, Rubin decided to become a Yiddish folklorist and sought guidance from Chaim Zhitlowsky, a prominent Yiddish scholar. She began her research at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the New York Public Library, and the Jewish Theological Seminary archives. She taught music and poetry in Yiddish schools in New York and started publishing in journals. During World War II, she translated Yiddish diaries smuggled out of European ghettos and concentration camps. From about 1947, she conducted serious fieldwork among Jewish immigrant communities in New York City, Montreal, and Toronto, focusing on displaced persons who arrived after the Holocaust.
Rubin’s work is considered deeply significant because she began collecting Yiddish folksongs and folktales when interest in Yiddish culture was very low. Over the next twenty years, she gathered thousands of songs from a generation of survivors nearly annihilated by Nazism and later Stalinist repression. She continued her studies in Yiddish language and history with scholar Max Weinreich. In addition to collecting, she organized and performed in Yiddish folksong recitals and hosted salons in her Grammercy Park Avenue apartment. As part of the folk revival movement, she performed at New York’s Town Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall, participated in Expo 67, and appeared in concerts with Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Ronnie Gilbert. She was heavily involved in the Jewish Music Forum and the National Jewish Music Council, and fostered international scholarly relations with folklorists in Israel and Europe.
Irene Heskes praised Rubin’s “prodigious dedication” to preserving Yiddish culture and song, ranking her as a leading Yiddish collector-scholar of the twentieth century.
Quick Facts
- Birth Name
- Rivke Rosenblatt
- Birth Date
- 1906-09-01
- Birth Place
- Montreal, Quebec (or perhaps Khotyn, Bessarabia [Russian Empire, now Ukraine])
- Death Date
- 2000-06-11
- Death Place
- Mamaroneck, New York
- Occupation
- folk singer, folkorist, scholar, poet
- Alma Mater
- Union Institute and University
- Thesis Title
- The Jewish woman and her Yiddish folksong
- Thesis Year
- 1976
- Discipline
- Yiddish studies
Facts from the source article.
Reader's Guide
Ruth Rubin's significance lies in her role as a collector and preserver of Yiddish folksongs and folktales at a critical historical moment. She began her fieldwork when interest in Yiddish culture was minimal, and she focused on survivors of the Holocaust and Stalinist repression, capturing songs that might otherwise have been lost. Her work is considered deeply significant because she gathered material from a generation that had nearly been annihilated. Fellow scholar Irene Heskes praised Rubin's 'prodigious dedication' and ranked her as one of the leading Yiddish collector-scholars of the twentieth century. Rubin's performance style was described as 'simple and unaffected,' and contemporaries saw her performances more as acts of cultural transmission than artistic expression. She recorded many of the songs she collected from the 1940s through the 1980s, often working with Moses Asch, and deposited her field recordings in archives in the United States (Library of Congress, YIVO, Wayne State University), Canada (Canadian Museum of History), and Israel, where they now constitute important archival research collections. Her legacy endures through these collections and her influence on later scholars.
Did You Know?
- She performed at Expo 67 and in folk concerts with Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Ronnie Gilbert.
- Her field recordings are held in archives including the Library of Congress, YIVO, Wayne State University, the Canadian Museum of History, and Israel.
- She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Yiddish Folk Arts Program in 1989.
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