AI tool for reading Yiddish letters developed in Lithuania
In Vilnius, Lithuania, Vilnius University researcher Serhii Hurbych developed VILNISH, a tool that converts handwritten and historical printed texts in Yiddish and Hebrew into a digital format for search and translation. The service helped American Felicity Trueblood read about 50 pages of letters written by her great-grandfather, Rabbi Pavel Malisoff of Konotop, between 1927 and 1934.
This was reported by The Jerusalem Post. The letters, written in Yiddish using the Hebrew alphabet, had been kept for decades at the home of Trueblood's cousin in Palm Springs. They were addressed to her great-uncle Solomon, who emigrated to the United States and changed his surname to Malis.
Digitizing manuscripts
VILNISH was launched at the end of last year. Hurbych, a native of Ukraine, studied Hebrew and Yiddish alongside electrical engineering and at Vilnius University works on digital methods for analyzing Jewish archival texts. To train the model, he used diaries, memoirs and other interwar-period documents held by the National Library of Lithuania.
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Trueblood contacted the researcher in May and received translations of all the letters within a month. According to her, Hurbych not only used a language model but also explained religious terms, biblical references and the historical context important for understanding the rabbi's texts.
Letters from Konotop
In the letters, Malisoff described his family's poverty and separation: all 11 of his children were forced to move to different parts of the USSR or emigrate to Canada and the United States. He also wrote about hunger in Konotop during forced collectivization and the disappearance of religious life — observance of Shabbat and holidays, kosher food, circumcision and religious education.
Letters from Malisoff's wife and children, sent after his own correspondence stopped in 1934, changed Trueblood's understanding of her great-grandfather's death. From these letters, she learned that he died of a heart attack at the age of 74 and that city residents gave him an honored final farewell. Hurbych expects VILNISH to help other families and researchers work with large collections of archival documents in Yiddish and Hebrew.
