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For over three decades, Ilan Stavans, the distinguished scholar of Jewish Latin America, built the world's richest historical and personal collection of Latin American Judaica: books, manuscripts, translations, music, photographs, and other items from colonial to contemporary Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Chile, and beyond in Ladino, Yiddish, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Polish, Russian, and other languages. As he approached the age of sixty, he decided it was time to house the collection in an institution committed to its long-term expansion as a source of research. In this presentation, Stavans recounts how, with German man of letters Walter Benjamin as his inspiration, he packed 160 large boxes.

Produced by, and used with permission of the Yiddish Book Center.