By Alona Bach, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Short-Term Graduate Public History Fellow Electrical Engineering in Yiddish: The Vilna Technicum (and Beyond) “Up to this point, there has not been a single book about electricity in Yiddish, aside from a few small pamphlets,” declared the engineer Israel Okun in January 1922. It was a bold, frank introduction to his new Yiddish translation of a German textbook about…
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…
Join the Center for Jewish History and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research on a quest to examine the #Jewish exploration of the heavens as we present our new exhibition: From as early as Genesis, Jews have pondered the expanse that surrounds our planet, as well as their place in them. Astronomy, mathematics, and other sciences appear frequently in books published by rabbis and scholars…
Michelle McCarthy, M.S.L.I.S., Reference Services Assistant, Center for Jewish History On Wednesday, March 11th, the 64th Annual Jewish Book Awards for 2014 were held at the Center for Jewish History. The awards are distributed each year in 15 categories by the Jewish Book Council to promote the “reading, writing, and publishing of modern Jewish content in American literature.” These categories encompass a strong variety…
By Zachary Loeb, M.S.I.S. Reference Services Librarian – Patron Services Libraries and archives contain a heck of a lot of paper, and oftentimes getting access to that paper requires (you guessed it) even more paper. For years, visitors to the Center for Jewish History’s Lillian Goldman Reading Room needed to grab a stack of paper call slips if they wanted to access any material…
