In collaboration with the Center\u2019s in-house partner, the American Jewish Historical Society<\/a>, and project partner, the Museum of Chinese in America<\/a>, the grant will showcase understudied intersections of the Jewish and Chinese immigrant and refugee experience in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods. The project will consist of the digitization of six collections, followed by a digital exhibit and an academic conference.<\/p>\n \u201cJewish and Chinese communities have lived side by side for generations in New York City, but their stories have rarely been looked at side by side,\u201d said Bernard Michael CEO and president at CJH, \u201cWe are excited to shine a new spotlight on the connections between their struggles and their successes in a new country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCollaboration with CJH, an organization whose values align closely with MOCA\u2019s, is a natural fit and exciting step forward in the Museum\u2019s work to build bridges between communities,\u201d said Nancy Yao Maasbach, president of MOCA. \u201cThere are deep connections between the living history of the Chinese and Jewish experiences in America. We are deeply grateful to CLIR for enabling us to digitally preserve this knowledge, and in turn enable others to explore and increase their understanding of the impact that exclusionary U.S. legislation has on American society.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the fields of American Jewish history and Chinese American history are well established, rarely are the stories analyzed in concert,\u201d said Dr. Annie Polland, executive director of AJHS, \u201cThe materials aggregated in this project offer intriguing opportunities for comparison.\u00a0 HIAS\u2019s refugee work and Chinese detainees\u2019 paper sculptures show how both communities navigated difficult paths to the United States, pointing to moments when the Golden Door has both opened and closed to those desperate for America\u2019s freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Funded through 2021, the project was one of 17 out of 101 applications chosen by CLIR<\/a> to bolster cross-disciplinary research and learning.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Screen-Shot-2019-01-14-at-3.20.42-PM-1024x809.png\")
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Materials were selected according to scholarly impact, condition and impact on the institution\u2019s ability to provide access. Specifically, the Center will digitize materials from the archives of AJHS, including the records of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society<\/a>, the records of the United Service for New Americans<\/a>, and the papers of HIAS and USNA leader Cecilia Razovsky<\/a>. The project team will also digitize the Fly to Freedom Collection<\/a> of paper sculptures, created by Chinese asylum-seekers detained by U.S. immigration authorities, and two collections of Chinese-American newspapers held at MOCA.<\/p>\n