New Judaica Curator, Eitan Kensky

I am excited to announce that Eitan Kensky, Stanford Library’s new Judaica and Hebraica Curator, started work on July 9. Eitan is responsible for developing, managing, and providing outreach for Stanford’s rich Jewish Studies collections. He joins the Humanities and Area Studies Resource Group, and will also work closely with Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. You can find him in his office, Green 321B, in the McDermott Suite.

Eitan takes the reins from Judaica Curator Emeritus, Zachary Baker, who retired in January 2018, and Anna Levia, who did a fantastic job as interim Judaica Curator. Anna's office is now down the hall, Green 331D.

Eitan comes to Stanford Libraries after three years as the Director of Collections Initiatives at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. At the Yiddish Book Center, Eitan worked on a wide range of digital collections projects — from digitizing archival recordings of concerts, lectures and other public programs to collaborating with peers at libraries in the US and Israel on an effort to make the entirety of Yiddish literature available online, without cost. He also managed the Book Center’s translation fellowship program, edited the annual translation issue of the Center’s magazine, and worked on an upcoming exhibition about Yiddish in the United States.

Before joining the Yiddish Book Center, Eitan taught Yiddish and Jewish Studies at Harvard. He co-founded In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, a digital, open access journal devoted to cultivating a new generation of Yiddish scholarship, and to finding new ways of integrating scholarship and original sources. He holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Harvard, and his own research focuses on twentieth-century American Jewish Culture.

 He is particularly interested in the intersection of art and ideas, and how American Jews tell their own stories through literature, comics, film, and television. This is his first time living west of the Mississippi. Welcome, Eitan!