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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
A comprehensive and fairly balanced article including history as well as links to specific topics and articles about anti-Zionism
Links to basic information about Zionism from the Jewish Agency
A definition of Zionism
Ambassador Herzog's response to the "Zionism is Racism" resolution in the UN
The MidEastWeb history of the conflict includes an explanation of Zionism and strives to be balanced.
The Ledger is Connecticut's only weekly Jewish newspaper.
B'nai B'rith Radio broadcasts an eclectic Judaic play list including traditional Yiddish, secular Israeli, Jewish American, Instrumental, and Chasidic music. Its goal is to unite Jews around the world through music.
Synagogues Without Jews is a website hosted by Beth Hatefutsoth. Based partly on the book of the same name by Rivka and Ben-Zion Dorfman (Jewish Publication Society 2000), the site reviews the local histories of Jewish communities in central Europe and illustrates aspects of the art and architecture of relatively little known synagogues.
JMommies is the newest website for Jewish Moms, created by two Jewish Moms just like you! Looking for a playgroup? Log into the forums and start your own. Want to commiserate with other new moms who are getting no sleep? Login and chat anytime day or night. Debating Pre-K or Kindergarten for your child? Sign-in and ask what other JMommies think. Moving to a new city? Check out the City Links guide to your Jewish Community. Looking for an OB-GYN, pediatrician, or a mohel, perhaps? See who other JMommies in your area find to be tried and true.
Being Jewish moms ourselves, we understand the importance of connecting to Jewish families in your community. JMommies.com gives you a chance to connect with Jewish moms who are local to you and across the globe. Check out our articles, hop on daily to our blog Cellphones & Candy written by our own Hip Mamaleh, contact new and old friends through our forums. Make yourself at home here, this site is for you and your friends, the JMommies.
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