Likely and Unlikely Heroes of Jewish Czernowitz

Iosif Vaisman

Dr. Iosif Vaisman was born in Chernovtsy (Tshernovits), Ukraine. He received a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Russian Academy of Sciences and currently teaches bioinformatics and computational biology at George Mason University in Maryland. In 1994 Dr. Vaisman created the Virtual Shtetl, the first website dedicated to Yiddish language and culture, and since then he has been lecturing at IAYC and various other Yiddish conferences and festivals. For several years he moderated Mendele, the premier online Yiddish list. He is a long-time board member of Yiddish of Greater Washington and of IAYC. In 2011 he was elected the 3rd IAYC President, and since 2013 he and Dr. Raphael Finkel have been IAYC co-Presidents.