Ruth Rubin ^People

One of the first women to become a prominent folklorist, Mrs. Rubin was also among thefirst American scholars to document the culture of Eastern European Jews, anticipating by decades the Yiddish revival of the 1970's. Starting in the 1930's, she amassed a collection of about 2,000songs - - love ballads, lullabies, songs of the facto- ries and streets-- still considered unparalleled in its scope.In the mid-1930's Mrs. Rubin began to concentrate seriously on folklore, go- ing on to study with the eminent Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich and, during World War Il, translating diaries smuggled out of ghettos and Nazi camps. With the end of the war and the revelation of the extent of the Holocaust, and of its sweeping des- truction of Yiddish culture, Mrs. Rubin became even more determined to preservea piece of what remained by making field recordings. In the last decades of the 20th century, Mrs. Rubin's work was a cornerstone ofthe Yiddish revival movement. Withan older generation of Jewish singers dying off, young musicianswho wanted to learn Yiddish folksongs turned to her books and records. Mrs. Rubin's field recordings are now housedin various collections, including the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York.Mrs. Rubin earned a Ph.D. in 1976 from Union Graduate School in Cleveland, writing her dissertation on the songs of Jewish women.