This is a set of links that I used to keep on the United Jewish Center website
Note: All links will open a new browser window.
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The North American Jewish Data Bank (NAJDB) was created in 1986 by the Council of Jewish Federations and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Part of their mission is to "provide empirical survey data sets about the North American Jewish community" and also to "encourage academicians, students, communal professionals and others to utilize Data Bank holdings." This is, in part, accomplished by their website, which features questionnaires, reports, and data files from the National Jewish Population Surveys of 1971, 1990, and 2000-2001. Visitors can look at these reports directly from the homepage, and they will also want to click on the "American Jewish Year Book" area. Here they will find articles on America's Jewish population from the American Jewish Year Book, dating back to 1949. Also, visitors can look at state information by using the "Community Archive by State" section. Finally, the site contains an FAQ area and contact information for staff members at the NAJDB.
Revered by some, criticized by others, Leo Strauss remains a very important and influential figure in a number of academic fields, including political philosophy, classics, and Jewish studies. For twenty years, Strauss was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, and the Leo Strauss Center at that institution was created in order "to promote the serious study of Leo Strauss's thought primarily through the preservation and publication of the unpublished written and audio record that he left behind." On the Center's site, visitors can make their way through sections titled "Strauss's Publications", "On Strauss's Thought", "Strauss Archives", and a biographical sketch. In the "Strauss's Publications" area visitors can read a detailed bibliography compiled by Heinrich Meier. The "Strauss Archives" section contains a finding aid to the Leo Strauss Papers held at the Special Collections Research Center in the University of Chicago Library. Moving on, the "Audio of a Meno Class" section contains an audio recording of Strauss's class on Plato's Meno from the spring of 1966. The site is rounded out by a search engine and information about the persons responsible for the administration of the Center.
In an effort to recognize the more than 350-year history of Jewish contributions to American culture, May was proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month. To help celebrate, this website was created by a collaboration of various government entities, including the Library of Congress, the National Park Service, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There are a wide array of topics covered on the site, including the following that are featured on the homepage: the work of Jewish artists and craftsmen from North Africa, films and lectures during the month of May, recordings of Jewish songs, the role of Jewish parachutists in World War II, and Jewish veterans from World War II. On the left side of the page is a menu that includes "Stories", "Exhibitions and Collections", and "Images Used on This Site". The latter link allows visitors to read the bibliographic information of the images used on the site, as well as view the images more closely, in a bigger format. In addition, interested visitors can find events celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month on the right hand side of the page.
The West Bank and East Jerusalem Archaeological Database forms part of "an Israeli-Palestinian dialog initiative concerning the standing of archeological sites and materials." The project is based at the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies at Tel Aviv University, and this website affords interested parties the opportunity to learn about their current projects, publications, and research initiatives. An amazing part of this website is the database which offers access to information on close to 6,000 archaeological sites identified by their team of researchers over the past forty years. The sites have been plotted on GIS maps, and they include information about the exact site coordinates, periods of existence, major finds, and survey references. While visitors can't access all of this data currently online, they can see examples here on the website. Additionally, visitors will want to look at the "Publications" area. Here they can peruse full-text versions of publications like "Israel's Relations with the Third World" and "Lyndon Johnson and Israel: The Secret Presidential Recordings".
For anyone interested in the public policy, diplomacy, and international law of the Middle East over the past century, this documentary record provides hundreds of pages of primary sources. For instance, a British White Paper from June 1922 attempted to resolve "the outstanding questions which have given rise to uncertainty and unrest among certain sections of the population" of Palestine, "due to apprehensions, which are entertained both by sections of the Arab and by sections of the Jewish population." Many documents follow, including a number of United Nations Security Council Resolutions, armistice agreements between Israel and Lebanon and Egypt, attempts to establish borders, and many attempts to broker a truce between Israelis and Palestinians.
This website is a comprehensive resource for those interested in Judaica librarianship, Jews, Judaism, the Jewish experience, and Israel. Visitors can click on "Awards" on the left side of the page to see the awards given for Jewish librarianship, Jewish children's books, and the publishing of Judaica reference materials. User can go to the "Accreditation" link to see the libraries that are accredited by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL), and learn about how to apply for accreditation. Under the "Resources" link, visitors can read the transcripts of the "Feinstein Lecture Series" on Judaica that the Foundation for Jewish Culture sponsors. After looking over that area, visitors may wish to click on the link to the AJL Podcast on the left side of the page. Here they will find many topics covered, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, music, and Jewish holidays. Moving on, a link to Children's and Teen's literature features prominently on the homepage of the AJL Podcast link, and visitors will find links to several podcasts of books of Jewish content. Finally, they can also click on the "Book of Life Podcast," on the left side of the page to listen to a podcast about Jewish people and the books they enjoy.
Created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the "Voices on Antisemitism" podcast series provides a "broad range of perspectives about antisemitism and hatred today." With funding from the Oliver and Elizabeth Stanton Foundation, this series contains over 50 conversations with Holocaust survivors, judges from South Africa, and German scholar Matthias Küntzel. Visitors can browse through the podcasts, subscribe to the RSS feed, and even offer comments on each program. Along the right hand side of the homepage, visitors can view a collection of "Related Links", which include articles from the Holocaust Encyclopedia and detailed subject bibliographies. Additionally, there are guidelines for educators who wish to discuss the Holocaust in their classrooms.
Founded in 1913, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has worked for over a century to expand its original mission “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Between July 2013 and February 2014, the ADL conducted the ADL Global 100, a survey questionnaire of which the results are fully available and searchable on the site. To view the results, readers may like to start with the interactive Map, where they may select a region of the globe before drilling down to country level for more specific information on anti-semitism. In addition, the Did You Know tab offers valuable information about global anti-semitism, while the Compare tab allows readers to analyze similarities and differences between different regions around the world. The graphics on this interactive website make it a first class viewing and knowledge experience.
The Jewish Virtual Library website is a project designed and maintained by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), which was established as a nonprofit organization in 1993. From the homepage, visitors are presented with a series of topical areas such as "History", "The Holocaust", "Politics", and "Travel", along eight other additional areas. The "Reference" area is quite helpful, as it contains a number of helpful fact sheets and a timeline for the history of Judaism. The "Israel & The States" section will also interest many visitors, as it contains detailed information about the nature of the relationship between each US state and the nation of Israel. The site is rounded out by a glossary of relevant terms, a selection of maps of the region, and a list of suggested readings.
Designed as a partnership between five major institutions of Jewish scholarship, history and art (including the American Jewish Historical Society, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the American Sephardi Federation), the Center has combined holdings of approximately 100-million archival documents, artifacts, paintings, and textiles. From the organization's homepage, visitors can learn about the mission of the center, how to conduct genealogical research using their holdings, and browse a calendar of the many events and conferences held at the Center's headquarters in Manhattan. One of the online highlights is the fine archive of audio and video clips and interviews available in the Events at the Center area. Here visitors can listen to the proceedings of an international conference on anti-Semitism in the West held in May 2003, and view interviews with Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Shimon Peres. Also, visitors may elect to sign up to receive the Center's email newsletter.
The Center for Jewish History Digital Collections provide access to the digital assets of both the Center and its partner organizations, including the Yeshiva University Museum and the American Sephardi Federation. Visitors can use the search engine, or visit the Popular Topics visual interface to click around at their leisure. Also, the site allows users to browse by partner organizations or resource type (slides, prints, oral history, and so on). The Oral History area is a real gem, as it contains over 958 interviews with Jewish leaders, activists, historians, and others from the past several decades. All told, the archive contains well over 50,000 items, and for anyone with an interest in social and cultural history, it's a tremendously valuable resource.
The mission of the American Jewish Historical Society is "to foster awareness and appreciation of the American Jewish past and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation and dissemination of materials relating to American Jewish history." Constituting the oldest ethnic historical organization in the United States, the Society provides detailed information on its activities on its Web site, which includes the publication of the American Jewish History quarterly journal and its research resources available for scholars and other interested parties. These resources include a library (with locations in Waltham, Massachusetts and New York) with 50,000 volumes and an archive containing approximately 40 million documents. Information about their reference services are also available online, along with a quiz on American Jewish history. This site will be helpful to visitors hoping to do extended research on the Jewish experience in America from the colonial period to the recent past.
Established in 1976, the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) moved into a new building on Independence Mall in Philadelphia in 2010. Over its history, the NMAJH has explored American Jewish identity through "lectures, panel discussions, authors' talks, films, children's activities, theater, and music." On the web site, visitors can learn about exhibitions, education outreach programs, and collections. In the Collections area, visitors can make their way through original and wonderful items that tell the story of the American Jewish experience through art, immigration, childhood, and sports. Moving on, the Programs area has wonderful information on upcoming lectures, musical performances and discussion groups. The site is rounded out by a link to the museum's pressroom and adult education programs.
A trip to the National Museum of American Jewish History Exhibitions page will reward you with digital versions of a variety of current and permanent exhibitions. One highlight is Creating American Jews, a permanent exhibition opened in September 1998, which explores Jewish identity in the United States. Each section of this exhibition consists of a text that is illustrated with thumbnail images of artifacts, which can be enlarged for better resolution and more information about each item. Also available is a preview of a current exhibition, With Eyes Toward Zion: The Political Cartoons of Noah Bee, with images of about two dozen of Bee's newspaper cartoons from the 1950s to the 1980s. Those with an interest in museums and exhibition history will be very pleased with the Previous Exhibitions listing, which provides descriptions and selected images from National Museum of American Jewish History shows dating back to its founding in 1976.
This online exhibit from the National Museum of American Jewish History is an outstanding photographic and audio document of Jewish life in South Philadelphia. Once the vibrant center of the city's immigrant Jewish community with tens of thousands of residents, South Philadelphia now holds only about 400 mostly elderly Jews. The exhibit combines evocative photos with the residents's reminiscences of Jewish South Philadelphia's past and their thoughts on the state of their neighborhoods today. This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in Jewish urban culture and the transformations of America's immigrant neighborhoods.
New as of April 2002 and a work-in-progress, the site is the labor of love of students and scholars working in Marquette University's Department of Theology under the direction of Professor Alexander Golitzin. While many might be inclined to believe that the site is for adepts only, nothing is further from the truth, as nearly every theme addressed presents a broad field of links to studies on their primary subject. Broken into specific themes or topics, the site covers a vast array of subjects from multiple traditions and lands. And for those who need a little help with the background, the site also provides a prodigious webliography of further online resources of biblical and exegetic studies, including links to the incredible Orion Dead Seas Scrolls site and the Hagiography Database.
Jointly sponsored by the Historic Cities Center within the Department of Geography at Hebrew University and the Jewish National and University Library, the Historic Cities Web site is intended to contain maps, literature, documents, books, and other relevant material concerning the past, present, and future of historic cities While some of these documents and ephemera are still forthcoming to the site, visitors will find a wide array of historic city maps and views dating from 1486 to 1720. The scanned maps are searchable alphabetically, by date, and by individual cartographer. Additionally, a bit of information is provided about each cartographer. Overall, the site contains close to two hundred individual city maps and renderings, ranging from medieval Heidelberg to Casablanca. For persons with an interest in urban morphology and the history of cartography, the Historic Cities site will be a good place to start.
Officially released on the Web last week, this impressive digital archive features the writings, scholarship, and thoughts of Albert Einstein, one of the 20th century's greatest scientists. The site allows visitors to view and browse 3,000 high-quality digitized images of Einstein's writings, ranging from his travel diaries (many of which are in German) to his published and unpublished scholarly manuscripts. The online archive draws on the manuscripts held by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was produced by the Jewish National & University Library's Digitization Project. Additionally, visitors have access to the archive database, which contains 43,000 records of Einstein related documents, such as his notebooks and third-party items. More casual visitors will want to visit the online gallery, which contains a selection of some of the key documents available here, such as his famous article that mentions the equation E=mc2. Overall, this is a thoroughly engaging and informative trove of digitized material on one of the world's most respected scientists.
Standing as a testament to the wide ranging contributions of the Jewish people to world culture and history, this Web site contains the complete contents of the massive 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, originally published between 1901-1906 by the Funk & Wagnall's Company. Conceived and funded by the Kopelman Foundation, this compilation is the only free encyclopedia of Judaica available on the Internet. While the encyclopedia obviously does not include such topics as the creation of the state of Israel or the Holocaust, it is a rather fascinating collection that recalls an interesting period in scholarship, and is a helpful historical document. Visitors can browse by the encyclopedia by letter, along with viewing a transcription of each entry and any accompanying images included with each entry. Those who might be interested in helping compile an updated version of the encyclopedia are also invited to join the mailing list.
A nonprofit organization based in Vienna, Austria, the Centropa group is headed up by a team of historians, educators, photographers, and other artists and scholars. The site contains a number of different oral history and photographic archives, in addition to sections dealing with contemporary Jewish life in the region and around the world. The basic search options within each of these sections allows visitors to choose a country of interest and to highlight certain themes (such as religious figures or personal letters), so that the results will be customized appropriately. An advanced search option allows visitors to look for materials based on family surname and city. The site concludes with a section that offers suggestions for eating in different restaurants around Eastern Europe and with travel tips for the area compiled by Ruth Ellen Gruber, who has published three books on Jewish Europe.
"For over 2000 years Jewish law has required that every husband present his wife, at the time of their marriage, with a marriage contract or ketubbah, guaranteeing the wife's financial rights in case of the husband's death or divorce." These Kettubot are a rich source for studying Jewish history, customs, and art, as many were decorated according to the locality and period and reflected local customs. In addition, each was a legal document with exact dates and place names, allowing historians to identify them precisely in time and place. The Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) has the largest collection of Kettubot in the world, with over 1,200 items. They have now created an online database of these documents, allowing scholars and others worldwide to access images and bibliographic information. Visitors may browse the collection by country or search by keyword. Images of the Kettubot are available in three resolutions, and bibliographic records include title, place, country, year, material, and size. The names of the parties to the contract and witnesses are also listed, but they appear to be in Hebrew, and users will need the appropriate language capability in their browsers. Information about the JNUL and an online catalog are available at the main site.
Since the rise of the nickelodeons, Jews have been bringing their own performance sensibilities to audiences all over the United States and the world in many different incarnations. Ranging from the comic genius of Jerry Lewis to the vaudeville legend Al Jolson, Jews (like many other ethnic groups) have become an indelible piece of the American entertainment fabric. Provided by The Jewish Museum (in tandem with an ongoing exhibit at the museum in New York), this online exhibit takes a look at certain popular works (like The Jazz Singer) and the rise of Yiddish film and radio as a way of looking at the relationships between Jews and American entertainment media. Through the exhibit, visitors can read brief essays and view objects related to such cultural phenomena as Seinfeld, Your Show of Shows, and Yiddish film.
The Medici family is widely considered one of the most famous and respected patrons of arts during the Renaissance, and their legacy perseveres in the numerous works of art, music, and sculpture that were produced as a result of their beneficence. The archive of the Medici Grand Dukes contains almost three million letters, and offers "the most complete record of any princely regime in Renaissance and Baroque Europe." Currently, the Medici Archive Project is developing this site to place many of these letters online, along with a strong interest in the history of costumes and Jewish history during the Renaissance. One of the site's strongest element is the Document of the Month, where the Archive's curators have selected an item from their holdings to place online, along with a long-form essay detailing the provenance and importance of the document. Visitors to the site can also search the currently available documents in a variety of ways or by browsing a complete list.
This exhibition of works by Polish-born Jewish artist and activist Arthur Szyk from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum presents over 40 pieces by Szyk, dating from 1913 to 1949. There are book illustrations, pages from Passover haggadahs, and scenes from the biblical Book of Esther. Also of note are cartoons and caricatures from American newspapers and magazines including the New York Post, Chicago Sun, Time, and Look. The visual images are often accompanied by links to audio and video (for example, while looking at the Szyk drawing on the cover of a program for We Will Never Die, a pageant by Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht created as a memorial for the Jewish dead of Europe, visitors can listen to an 11-minute excerpt of the 1943 Hollywood Bowl performance, or watch a few minutes of historical film footage). Related articles and historical photographs appear throughout the exhibition, and curators' commentaries. It is easy to get a little lost in this wealth of material; clicking the link MORE Szyk will take you back to the artindex, thumbnails and links to all the art work in the show.
In 2002, Sol Singer and his wife, Ruth, donated his remarkable collection of philatelic Judaica to the special collections department of Emory University's library system. For over forty years, Singer had collected every stamp issued by the state of Israel as well as supporting material and stamps featuring Jewish themes issued by various nations across the globe. The collection is divided into three parts, including a complete set of stamps of the State of Israel up to 2002, some of which may be viewed as part of this online sampling of the diverse holdings from Singer's gift to Emory. The first section features these stamps from Israel and include such gems as the stamp commemorating the immigration of North African Jews and the dramatic stamp that was created in remembrance of Kristallnacht. Rounding out the site is a selection of relevant websites that also feature philatelic Judaica.
There is much about the Jewish experience in America that is similar to that of other immigrant groups, including the processes of acculturation, discrimination, acceptance, and assimilation, to name but a few. This special online exhibit from the Library of Congress features more than two hundred objects of American Judaica from its extensive holdings, supplemented by other items loaned by other cultural institutions. The exhibit looks at the Jewish experience through such documents as the correspondence between Newport's Hebrew Congregation in 1790 and George Washington, where the president noted that the United States gives "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." The section titled "A Century of Immigration, 1820-1924" is particularly rich in archival material, as it includes images of a Jewish prayer book intended for travelers to America and a beautiful woodcut print by Albert Potter that documents the bustle and opportunity of New York's Lower East Side during the turn of the 20th century. The site concludes with a list of suggested readings and information about various public programs associated with the on-site exhibit, such as film showings and lectures.
Once again, the good people at NOVA have created an eye-opening website to complement another interesting and compelling program in the long-running series. This website presents a host of materials about a recent archaeological exploration into a cave in the Judean desert designed to explore the last refuge of the legendary Jewish patriot Shimon Bar-Kokhba, who led a revolt against the Romans in the year 132 CE. This latest exploration was designed as a follow-up to a previous excavation led by Israeli archaeologist in 1960, which successfully uncovered a cache of ancient documents and artifacts that enhanced understanding of this legendary revolt. On the site, visitors can read an overview of the program, and partake of several nice interactive features, including an interactive translation of a 2000-year-old document found in the cave 40 years ago. Another feature that should not be missed is an interview with the late Pinchas Porat, who was just a young volunteer on the first fateful archaeological dig in 1960 that just happened to find some of these important relics from the Second Revolt of the Jews.
This remarkable resource is provided by the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where, in 1998, library staff uncovered a sixteen-volume set of typescripts of 70 interviews of Holocaust survivors conducted in 1946. In that year, Dr. David Pablo Boder (a professor at IIT) travelled to Europe and recorded 109 interviews (200 hours) on a wire recorder, 70 of which he later transcribed in English. While numerous excellent projects to record the experiences of survivors have been undertaken, this one is unique in that the interviews took place only one year after liberation, while the victims were still in displaced persons camps throughout Europe. The full text of the 70 interviews, along with a profile, summary, and in a few cases, the audio recording (in German, Yiddish, or Polish), have been placed on the site. The interviews may be browsed alphabetically or searched via a keyword search engine. A few problems were encountered using the latter, but the site as a whole is simply a wonderful resource for researchers, teachers, students, or anyone who wants to learn more about heartbreaking and incredible stories of loss and survival during the Holocaust.
Presented by the British Library, Voices of the Holocaust consists of personal, oral testimonies gathered from Jewish men and women who came to reside in Britain. These testimonies are true stories told by Holocaust survivors that depict life during this horrifyingly tumultuous time. The testimonies are divided into six main categories -- life before the Holocaust, ghettos and deportations, the camps, resistance, liberation, and testimonies by Edith Berkin. For scholars, researchers, historians, and those interested in the Holocaust, this site serves as a compliment to the sixteen-volume set of typescripts of 70 interviews of Holocaust survivors conducted in 1946 by the Illinois Institute of Technology.
The Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, a part of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has recently released this fourteen page document, eleven years in the making, at the Holy See web site. The document is historic in its attempt to come to grips with the amount of assistance that Christians gave to Jews during the Holocaust. It states: "Those who did help to save Jewish lives as much as was in their power, even to the point of placing their own lives in danger, must not be forgotten... Alongside such courageous men and women, the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ's followers... For Christians, this heavy burden of conscience of their brothers and sisters during the Second World War must be a call to penitence." The document is currently available in English and Italian.
The Nizkor Project, one of the largest online repositories of primary documents related to the Holocaust, is in the final stages of converting the Israel State Archives' extensive records of the Adolf Eichmann trial and placing them online. Eichmann, who supervised the implementation of the "Final Solution," escaped to Argentina after the war, where he was secretly apprehended by Israeli agents in 1960 and brought to Israel for trial. The trial took place in the spring and summer of 1961, after which Eichmann was convicted of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity and executed on 31 May 1962. The complete trial records are offered in two sections, the District Court Sessions and the Judgement. The first currently contains three volumes of trial proceedings, through June 29, 1961. The last two volumes, which contain records from June 29 until the execution, are due to be released shortly. The second section features the complete text of the court's judgement, which addresses the relevant legal and jurisdictional issues and traces the development of the "Final Solution" and Eichmann's role in it from the outbreak of the war to the Wannsee Conference and its implementation. The release of these records online, like many of the Nizkor Project's efforts, will be welcomed by Holocaust scholars and historians. In addition, secondary or university instructors will find that the trial transcripts offer numerous examples of powerful testimony from participants and victims that are invaluable in teaching the Holocaust to students.
The past few years have seen a number of demonstration projects arrive on the Internet for use as pedagogical tools in college-level instruction. One such project is the Holocaust Denial on Trial site, developed as part of Emory University's Witness to the Holocaust Program and the Institute for Jewish Studies. Visitors unfamiliar with the case will want to begin with the background section, which outlines the nature of the case, along with answering some basic questions about the participants in the trial. The site contains literally hundreds of primary documents related to the widely discussed British court case in which David Irving (a British Holocaust denier) sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher for libel. The site begins with the complete text of the judgment against Irving, and follows with full-text transcripts spanning from the January 2000 opening statements to closing remarks in March 2000. This site provides an in-depth look into one of the most riveting court trials regarding the nature of Holocaust scholarship (and libel), as well as serving as a well-conceived online educational tool.
The USHMM has recently launched a new Learning Center for students and teachers, as well as the interested public. The site offers a very impressive collection of resources, including 140 short articles, 41 artifact images, 103 video clips, 202 maps, 28 chronologies, and over 900 photos. These are organized by topic, such as Antisemitism, "Final Solution," America and the Holocaust, Jewish Resistance, and Forced Labor, among others. A keyword search engine is also provided. The USHMM has previously offered a number of quality online resources, but this outstanding and varied collection now represents perhaps the finest introduction to and summary of the Holocaust available online.
Based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies "supports scholarship and publications in the field of Holocaust studies, promotes the growth of Holocaust studies at American universities…and initiates programs to ensure the ongoing training of future generations of scholars specializing in the Holocaust." Visitors to their site can learn about conducting research at the Center, browse their calendar of events, and also sign up to receive their electronic newsletter. Many casual visitors will appreciate the "Center Scholarship" section of the site. Here they can learn about their recent publications, such as the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos and their archival guides. Moving on, their "Endowed Lectures" area contains audio recordings of many lectures, including a talk by Professor Kenneth Waltzer of Michigan State University titled "The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald".
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has some tremendous online resources, and the recent addition of the Holocaust Encyclopedia continues in this tradition. The interactive Encyclopedia includes hundreds of articles that cover topics like the Third Reich, refugees, ghettos, and the liberation of Nazi camps. Each entry contains hypertext links to other entries and relevant resources, including timelines, photo galleries, and primary source documents. Visitors can use the "Browse Articles" to get started, and they should also note that the articles are available in French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, and six other languages. In the "Additional Resources" section, visitors will find a link to "The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students" and a complete "A-Z" list of all the articles.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. has created an excellent exhibition here on this site to complement the one at their headquarters about the role of propaganda in World War II. The exhibition and accompanying "Features", including a "Poll and Online Forum" and "Student Activity", explore "how the Nazi Party used modern techniques as well as new technologies and carefully crafted messages to sway millions with its vision for a new Germany." Visitors will find that the exhibit goes beyond just images of propaganda posters, and starts by giving a detailed explanation of the history of the definition of propaganda under the heading "What is Propaganda?" on the homepage. The three image galleries, which can be found at the top of the page, are "Timeline", "Themes" and "Gallery". In the "Themes" section, visitors should scroll over the white-framed images to see the name of the theme that can be accessed by clicking on that image. There are seven themes here, including "Indoctrinating Youth", "Rallying the Nation", "Deceiving the Public", and "Defining the Enemy".
It has been four years since the Scout Report took a close look at the Yad Vashem website, and during that time, this fine site has added a number of helpful resources that are worth noting. The parent organization responsible for the site (the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) was established in 1953, and since then has been "entrusted with documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust period". To be sure one of the most important recent additions to the site is the central database of Shoah Victim's Names, where visitors may search a computerized database which contains the names of approximately half of the victims of the Holocaust. In order to give context to some of these individuals, visitors will want to go within "The Stories Behind the Names" section to learn more. Needless to say, the "Explore and Discover" area warrants several visits itself, as it contains helpful educational materials (such as "This Month in Holocaust History") and a number of classroom activities.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has done the Web-browsing public a great service by placing this extremely comprehensive and authoritative multimedia archive online. Online since 1999, the Multimedia Learning Center provides access to some of the past virtual exhibits sponsored by the Center's Museum of Tolerance (including a fine one dedicated to Polish Jews), a host of teacher's resources, and a helpful frequently-asked-questions area. The FAQ area may be most helpful for students, as it contains an interactive glossary of the Holocaust, a timeline of the Holocaust, and answers to 36 commonly asked questions about the Holocaust. The special collections area of the site contains a number of relevant primary documents related to the Holocaust, though it should be noted that the majority of them are available only in German and Hebrew.
As the series producer, Laurence Rees, mentions in the introduction to this engaging online presentation, "Auschwitz is unique. It has a physical beginning in May 1940 and physical ending in January 1945, and is the site of the single largest mass murder in the history of humanity." The overall focus of this website is to offer an informed and nuanced attempt to understand the extermination process and of the mentality of the people who perpetrated these heinous crimes. Here visitors can learn about the PBS television series about Auschwitz in great detail, and also explore (through the use of some well-designed interactive features) the actual layout and structure of the camps themselves and their various elements. Perhaps the most dramatic and emotional part of this site is the four-channel video installation, "Dachau 1974". Created by the pioneering video artists Beryl Korot, this intimate reflection on the Holocaust should not be missed.
Developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center, this site grew out of the Witness to the Holocaust Memorial Project, which began in 1978 to refute claims that the Holocaust never happened. The Project was founded by the late Fred Roberts Crawford, who was the directory of Emory University's Center for Research in Social Change (he also was a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III) The site is divided into three primary areas: history, liberators, and camps. The history section provides a brief overview of the Holocaust and the experiences of those held captive in the concentration camps, and their eventual release at the conclusion of the war. The liberators section contains 10 transcriptions of interview with persons involved in the liberation of the concentration camps, including Fred Crawford himself. The camps section contains profiles of four of the most notorious concentration camps, and includes schematic diagrams of the camps, archival footage from within the camps, and brief descriptions of each one, complemented with photographs.
This online BBC archive, Witnessing the Holocaust: Personal Accounts of a Crime Against Humanity, has radio and television programs from 1945-2005, and documents from 1942-1945, that reveal the horrors and aftermath of the Holocaust. Visitors interested in listening to or watching video or audio programs can scroll down the page to view the 17 programs available. The programs with a blue speaker icon next to the title denote a radio program, and those with a right-facing arrow next to the title indicate that there is a video available. Each program is accompanied by a written synopsis of the program, as well as a section entitled "Did You Know?" that has little known facts pertaining to the subject of the program. The radio programs range from a 1945 four-minute broadcast from a Canadian reporter entitled "Gestapo in Holland", to an almost hour-long 2003 broadcast called "Marianne Grant", about the artist's heart-wrenching story of having to paint for Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. The video programs include a 1989 interview with "Simon Wiesenthal" as well as a 2005 broadcast, "Grandchild of the Holocaust", about a grandson and his grandmother who was the only Holocaust survivor of her family.
The goal of the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute is "to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry-and the suffering they cause-through the educational use of the Institute's visual history testimonies." On their homepage, visitors can watch testimonies from Holocaust survivors and others, along with learning more about their "Featured Resources". These resources include the Education Portal, which brings together lesson plans for teaching about the Holocaust and guidelines for using primary documents in the classroom. Scholars and others will appreciate the "Scholarship & Research" area which includes information on upcoming conferences, research stipends offered through the Institute, and events. Also, it is worth noting that the site also has many resources in other languages, including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian.
How were so many people murdered in the Holocaust? It is a grim question, and it is explored with great sensitivity and insight in this digital exhibition created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Designed to complement an in situ exhibit, the materials here include photographs, oral histories, and other documents that look at the different roles played by teachers, workers, policemen, and teenagers during this period in world history. The Religious Leaders area contains moving newsreel footage about the role played by Ukrainian Orthodox bishops during this period. The site also includes a For Educators area, complete with lesson plans and resources, such as links to the Holocaust encyclopedia and bibliographies. Additionally, the site contains a glossary and a detailed timeline.
Beginning in the early 1960s, a number of social movements began to take hold across the United States. The American Indian Movement, feminism, the Black Power Movement, and others called into question existing power structures and certain cultural hierarchies. The Jewish Women’s Archive has created this interactive site, which explores the role of Jewish women in the feminist revolution. Visitors can elect to move through the materials on the site by following a timeline, viewing a number of themes, or searching the entire collection. Some of these compelling themes include “Confronting Power”, “Feminism and Judaism”, and “Setting the Feminist Agenda”. The timeline is a good way to peruse some of these documents and experiences, as it includes information on such luminaries as Sally Priesand (the first woman rabbi in America) and the First Conference on Jewish Women in 1973.
The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College “is dedicated to the growth of new and mutually enriching relationships between Christians and Jews.” To achieve this goal, the Center has established a wide range of outreach efforts, including lectures, seminars, and a number of publications and newsletters. On their site, visitors can learn about these events, and should also start their online journey by looking directly at the “Center Archives” section. Here visitors will find archived news bulletins from the Center and the splendid “Documents Depository”. The Depository contains a number of primary texts on Christian-Jewish relations, most of which are focused on the United States and the Vatican. Visitors can use a search engine to look over these documents, or they can browse around at their leisure. The site is rounded out by a collection of streaming videos that include panel discussions on such topics as German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a noted Nazi resistor.
Around the world, there are thousands of sites that hold great importance to the world’s different faiths and religions. It would be quite a task to document all these sites, but Holly Hayes (a graduate student in religious history) has created this website to serve as a destination for those persons who might like to learn a bit about such places. Currently, the site contains information on more than 1500 sites, and visitors can peruse these locales at their leisure. The sites are organized by country and category, and of course, visitors can also search the entire site as well. The categories theme is a good way to start browsing, as it contains Buddhist temples, Jewish museums, sacred mountains, and Shinto shrines. No such site would be complete without a substantial offering of photos, and this site has visitors covered all the way from St. David’s Cathedral in Wales to the Hagia Sophia.
Noted filmmaker David Grubin recently completed a documentary for PBS which explores 350 years of Jewish American history. This compelling profile focuses on the tension between "identity and assimilation" and at its heart is "quintessentially an American story." Visitors to the site can start their journey through the site by watching video clips from the program organized by themes. These themes include "Anti-Semitism in America", "Political Activism", and "Being Jewish in Modern America". Moving on, visitors can click on over to the "Share Your Story" area to chime in with stories about their family traditions and even contribute a recipe or two. The "For Educators" section contains a set of four lesson plans that can be used in conjunction with the program and the accompany materials on the site.
The motto of the National Yiddish Book Center is "Rescuing Books, Inspiring Readers". It's quite appropriate, as they have digitized over 10,000 books and placed them online here. Of course, that's not all they have done, and visitors to the site can read about their new facilities, their leadership, and membership opportunities. First-time visitors can click on the "About the Center" section to learn about their work, and after that, mosey on over to "The Jewish Reader" to learn about books that might be of interest for a book group, complete with reviews and study questions for each selection. Moving on, visitors can click on the "Yiddish Books Online" area to look over a wide range of out-of-print Yiddish titles. One facet of the site that will be especially useful for educators is the "Explore and Learn" section. Here visitors can click on a list of topical headings (such as "Linguistics" or "Translation") to view online resources from the Center and other reliable sources, including the New York Public Library and their in-house magazine, Pakn Treger.
Although this website seems at first glance to present oral histories collected from a very specific community, in a very specific location, at the very specific time - the Jewish community in Pittsburgh PA, interviewed between 1968 and 2001 - a quick perusal reveals that interviewees discussed people and topics on a national and even international scale. For example, Sophie Masloff, who became Pittsburgh's first female mayor in 1988, talked about President Jimmy Carter when she was interviewed in 1987. Other more widely known figures mentioned have a Pittsburgh connection, such as Jonas Salk, whose years at the University of Pittsburgh are discussed in the oral history of Dr. Julius Youngner, recorded in 1992. The Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh has digitized all 516 oral histories collected by volunteers from the Pittsburgh section of the NCJW (National Council of Jewish Women). Sound quality is not perfect for all the interviews, and full transcripts are not provided - but there are good summaries (abstracts), that indicate where on a tape a topic or name was mentioned. Indexes have been created for Interview (person interviewed); Name (person mentioned); Geographic; and Subject. Terms from all these indexes can be either browsed alphabetically, or searched.
The state of Washington has a sizeable Jewish community, and their roots can be traced back to the earliest settlers of the Northwest. This digital collection, from the University of Washington Libraries, highlights a small part of the photographs, documents, and materials held by the Washington State Jewish Archives. The Archives started in 1968, and this particular database was produced partially by funding from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and other organizations. Here visitors can browse over 900 photographs which document many aspects of the Jewish experience across the state. The collection includes photographs of Jewish servicemen and women, commercial businesses, anniversary celebrations, and so on. Visitors can browse the images by subject heading, or they can also perform their own detailed search.
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This tremendous archive at Dartmouth College grew out of a private collection assembled and digitally restored by Professor Alex Hartov. The Jewish Sound Archive Database and website were developed as a collaborative effort between Professor Lewis Glinert and Professor Hartov and several additional colleagues at Dartmouth. Currently, the collection has over 20,000 tracks available for online listening, and visitors should start by just using the "Browse" feature here. There's Jewish comedy ("Stories Our Jewish Mothers Forgot to Tell Us"), classical music, Jewish religious music, and much more. Also, users can perform a detailed search across the entire database. Visitors can also sign in to save their song selections for future listening, and they will definitely want to stop by this site numerous times.
This engaging project from the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries archives over one hundred years of Jewish newspapers published in Pittsburgh such as the Jewish Criterion, the American Jewish Outlook, and the Jewish Chronicle. It's worth noting that the first Jews in Pittsburgh consisted of a small community of German immigrants who came to the area in the 1840s. It was not until 1895 when the first English-language Jewish newspaper (the Criterion) was first published and they began extensive coverage of events throughout the Jewish community. Visitors can use the Browse tab to look around for specific volumes of interest or to search all of the newspapers here by keyword or publication date. It's a great way to learn about Pittsburgh's history and one of the Steel City's most vital groups of citizens.
In 1912, Jacob H. Schiff gave almost 10,000 books and pamphlets to the Library of Congress. It was a prodigious collection of Hebrew and Yiddish materials, and since then the Library has added over 190,000 works to this existing collection. This digital celebration complements an ongoing in situ exhibit at the Library, and it has a nice sampling of items from the Library's holdings. After checking out the About area, visitors can click on over to the Themes section to get started. Here visitors can make their way through The People of the Book, Gates of Prayer, Holy Land, and Beauty in Holiness. This last area is particularly noteworthy, as it features a beautiful version of the book of Esther executed by Israeli artist Avener Moriah and a gorgeous modern Passover Haggadah by Asher Kalderon.
Published in Chicago between 1895 and 1899, the American Jewess described itself as "the only magazine in the world devoted to the interests of Jewish women." The publication was founded by Rosa Sonneschein, and it offered the first sustained critique, by Jewish women, of gender inequities in Jewish worship and communal life. Recently, it was digitized by the Jewish Women's Archive as part of the digital offerings at the University of Michigan Library's website. Visitors can browse or search through all of the issues as they see fit. There are many fascinating articles, including a piece from June 1896 titled "Why Woman Should Ride the Wheel" about why it is important for woman to be involved in cycling. Scholars of American history, women's studies and other related topics will find much of interest here.
The story of American cities can be told in its waves of new immigrants and arrivals throughout the past several centuries. Philadelphia is no exception to this rich brocade of human existence and this digital collection from Temple University tells part of the fantastic story. This offering brings together photographs from the Philadelphia Jewish Archives and other agencies, including the Association for Jewish Children Records, the Levinthal Family Papers, and the Hebrew Sunday School Society Records. All told, there are almost 2,700 images here and visitors can perform detailed searches across the entire archive as they see fit. First-time users may wish to get started by keyword searching for "rabbi," "greeting cards," "architecture," or "celebration."
A comprehensive and fairly balanced article including history as well as links to specific topics and articles about anti-Zionism
Links to information about Israel from the Jewish Agency
A definition of Zionism
The Ledger is Connecticut's only weekly Jewish newspaper.
The online home of the weekly Forward newspaper.
A page on Jewish wedding traditions.
Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People, is more than a museum. This unique global institution tells the ongoing and extraordinary story of the Jewish people. Beit Hatfutsot connects Jewish people to their roots and strengthens their personal and collective Jewish identity. Beit Hatfutsot conveys to the world the fascinating narrative of the Jewish people and the transcending essence of the Jewish culture, faith, purpose and deed while presenting the contribution of world Jewry to humanity.