The University of Florida’s Price Library of Judaica has received an exciting new addition to its Latin American Jewish holdings: a library of Yiddish books primarily published in Buenos Aires, accompanied by related personal papers and documents. This remarkable collection honors Esther Rollansky’s legacy and enhances UF’s reputation as a vital center for the study of Latin American Jewish culture and diasporic history.
The donation comes from the estate of the late Esther Rollansky, a beloved Yiddish teacher in Buenos Aires who passed away in Israel in 2023. Esther was the daughter of Samuel (Shmuel) Rollansky, a leading Jewish-Argentine intellectual and editor of an influential Yiddish book series. Her collection reflects a lifetime devoted to preserving Yiddish language, literature and education in Latin America.
“We are deeply grateful to receive this outstanding collection of books. These materials, written in the primary language of Latin American Jews in the early 20th century and reflecting the vibrant educational and cultural landscape of Buenos Aires, will position our library as a leading destination for scholars of Jewish Latin American studies,” said Dr. Rebecca Jefferson, Curator of the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica.
The donation was made by Esther Rollansky’s children, Mira Kochanovsky and Eliezer Nowodworski, who knew of their mother’s friendship with Professor Raanan Rein, Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies. This relationship combined with Prof. Rein’s expertise in Argentine and Latin American Jewish communities bolstered their decision to donate the collection to the University of Florida. Kochanovsky and Nowodworski reflected on the family’s broad literary and cultural interests that permeated their childhood:
For us, it was natural that our grandparents’ house looked like a library. On the shelves, behind the visible books, were more books. Most of them were in Yiddish, but there were also many other languages. Most were about Jewish issues, but there were also books about Argentina and many other topics. Some were very old, yellowed, and worn. Others were new.
They explained that the same love of books continued in their mother’s home:
On a smaller scale, the same was true of our mother’s library. […] The topics were eclectic: Judaica, language teaching, psychology, pedagogy, literature, music, theater, as well as cookbooks, sewing and knitting patterns and more. Naturally, some books from our grandparents’ house went to our mother’s house. Some were duplicates with dedications from the authors or similarly —all the Who’s Who of the Yiddish arena after WWII.
Motivated by their mother’s love for learning and her lifelong dedication to Jewish education, the family elected to bequeath her library to UF, an institution they trusted to meticulously steward the books and documents and ensure their global accessibility to researchers and students.
“We are thrilled that this remarkable collection has found its home at the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica. We look forward to welcoming students and scholars of Jewish studies to explore the richness of twentieth-century Jewish life and to study Buenos Aires as a vibrant and multifaceted center of Yiddish culture”, said Professor Natalia Aleksiun, Harry Rich Chair of Holocaust Studies and Interim Director of the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies.