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Week of 7 November 1997 Vol. I, No. 11 Feature Article November 13 lecture Silenced Jewish voices to sing again The world of the Jewish shtetl has vanished from the face of the earth. Those small, often mud-poor villages in Eastern Europe and Russia -- the subject of stories by Sholem Aleichem and dozens of other Yiddish writers -- were drained by migrations in the early years of the century, bulldozed and burned off the map by the Nazis and the Soviets. All that remains are memories and the silent images of such photographers as Roman Vishniak. But a recent discovery in the former Soviet Union by musicologist Israel Adler is giving voice to those mute images. Israel Adler Adler, who is chairman of the Board of the Jewish Music Research Centre at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, will give a talk on an extraordinary collection of Jewish music and recordings that was thought for 50 years to have been lost. The collection of Jewish folklore in Russia and the Soviet Union was gathered during the first half of the century by a group of Jewish folklorists and musicians, including S. An-Ski, author of The Dybbuk, J. Engel, and Moishe Beregovski. In 1929, the material, which included about 1,000 popular songs recorded on 500 cylinders, was put under the care of Beregovski -- who was deported 20 years later during an anti-Jewish purge. When he returned in 1955, the archives had vanished. It was assumed they had been destroyed -- until Adler rediscovered them in 1994. Adler's talk, "Survivors of the Babi-Yar of Jewish Musical Memory," will survey the collection's history and its recovery. He will also play samples of early recordings of Yiddish songs, Hassidic niggunim, and even the voice of Sholem Aleichem. The presentation is Thursday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 906 of the Photonics Center, at 8 Saint Mary's St.