Photo above: Rabbi David Hill during his trip to the USSR in 1981. (Citation: Photographs and Negatives, 1981-1982. David Hill Papers; P-888; box 1, folder 8; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY, and Boston, MA.) Project Update: Digitization of Soviet Jewry collections from the American Jewish Historical Society Thanks to generous support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC), the Center for…
The First Female Ordained Rabbi: Regina Jonas By Jackie Brettschneider, Research Intern, Center for Jewish History As early as high school, Regina Jonas talked about becoming a rabbi. At the time not one woman was ordained to the position. Jonas’s pursuit came with many hardships and obstacles because she was a woman. Jonas, however, pursued ordination whole-heartedly because of her dedication to Jewish history,…
Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) In 2011 the Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute, one of its five partners, embarked on a project with Goethe University Frankfurt am Main to digitize nearly 1,000 books that went missing from the university library’s Judaica collection during the devastation of World War II. The goal of the project was to digitally recreate the Freimann Judaica Collection as it…
by Leanora Lange, Processing and Institutional Archivist and Digitization Projects Liaison, Center for Jewish History The summer 2014 Archival Fellows and the Center archivists who ran the program. From top left to bottom right: Katalin Rac, Martha Stellmacher, Martina Ravagnan, Rachel Miller, Jessica Parker, Aleksandra Kubica, Leanora Lange, Isaac Moore, Sarah Ponichtera, and Rachel Harrison. The summer of 2014 was a bustling and exciting…