I’m Jaime Taylor, the Center for Jewish History’s systems librarian. My job has two components: I administer the catalog software, and I also do strange things with the catalog records themselves. As such, by chance I see records for all sorts of interesting items that I might not otherwise realize the Center holds. Some months ago I read a title, “Trinitite from Trinity Nuclear…
By Elizabeth Hyman, former Assistant Processing Archivist, HIAS Archives Project; current Photo & Reference Archivist, American Jewish Historical Society Over the course of three years, in a project funded by HIAS in partnership with the American Jewish Historical Society, archivists at AJHS will organize, describe and make available to the public more than a thousand boxes of historical administrative files (primarily 1955-1990s). These files…
By David Myers, President/CEO of the Center for Jewish History The final song of the smash Broadway hit Hamilton asks with great poignancy: “Who will tell your story?” The line is a telling reminder that those who lack power or fail to live long enough, such as Alexander Hamilton, often don’t get to leave behind their own version of the past. The task of…
By Moriah Amit, Senior Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator Although the notion that our immigrant ancestors’ names were changed by clerks at Ellis Island has been debunked time and again by noted scholars in Jewish genealogy (see References below), this myth remains pervasive in the stories that American Jews tell about their family history. The truth, that most of our immigrant ancestors chose to…