Primary sources in American Jewish History

The Penn Libraries have launched a new website, the Gershwind-Bennett Isaac Leeser Digitization Project, featuring access to the personal papers and publications of Isaac Leeser, widely regarded as the foremost American Jewish leader in antebellum America The Leeser site, developed as an international partnership over the course of seven years, is the first of a number […]

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Crowdsourcing Yiddish transcription/translation

As anyone who has done research using Yiddish newspapers can tell you, it's not easy to find primary sources, especially those from newspapers, in the digital world.  While Yiddish newspapers contain critical information about the labor industry, immigration, the Jewish day-to-day environment, and so much else, finding these materials is not easy, and often requires […]

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The People in the Books: Now open at Columbia and online

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Columbia’s exhibition of Hebrew and Judaic manuscripts, The People in the Books, is now open, through January 25, 2013.  The exhibit is free and open to the public during all RBML hours of operation. Entry is free, and handicapped accessible. Please bring valid government-issued photo ID […]

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Digitized Newspaper: Herut

The Jewish Historical Press has just posted a new newspaper to their freely available website of full-text newspapers: "Herut", the daily newspaper of the main opposition party during the first years of the State of Israel. The newspaper was published in Tel-Aviv between 1948 and 1965. The JPRESS website now offers the issues between 1949 […]

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Important upgrades: RAMBI and Bar Ilan Responsa

Ladies and Gentlemen, drumroll please – we have fantastic news about updates from two of the most important resources in Jewish Studies: 1) RAMBI, the Index to Articles in Jewish Studies, profiled here, sent the below email yesterday: "Subject searching in RAMBI, The Index to Articles in Jewish Studies, is being changed so that searching […]

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Online Resource: JDC Archives online

The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has been helping Jews around the world since its inception at the onset of World War I in 1914.  Its archives have long been a resource for scholars researching Jewish immigration, anti-semitism, Jewish aid, geneology, and many other topics. Now, for the first time, the JDC Archives from 1914-1932 are […]

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More Yiddish…Haynt digitized and online

I wrote last year about the incredible resource that is the Historical Jewish Press.  In a further effort to make Jewish newspapers available freely online, the HJP has now digitized its first Yiddish paper,Haynt.  Haynt was a seminal Jewish newspaper in Eastern Europe from 1908-1939, and is a critical resource for day to day news […]

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Harvard’s Judaica Library Publications – available freely online!

Libraries tend to be dedicated to open access, devoted to making their collections available to anyone in need of research.  With a recent announcement from a Harvard Judaica Librarian, we see that Harvard is definitely on board with this.  The Judaica publications that they have digitized include work on Yiddish language and literature, Israel Studies, […]

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Online Resources: Finding Archives

It is true that the business of doing history in today’s internet age has become much easier, but there are still a tremendous amount of resources that are only available physically.  One example of this is archives, or collections of papers (personal or institutional).  Archives can range from the very small (one or two folders) […]

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CCNMTL And JTS Announce New Partnership

[See original press release here] The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) announced a three-year pilot project to have CCNMTL support JTS faculty in the purposeful use of technology and new media in teaching and learning. As part of the agreement, CCNMTL will open a satellite […]

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