Salon Jewish Studies Blog

In the framework of the Historic Jewish Press project at the JNUL the Jewish newspapers Davar (1925-1968), Ha-Zvi (1884-1915) and La Liberté / El Horria (1915-1922) have been digitized. Now ten newspapers are available online.

The comprehensive Eliasaf Robinson Collection on the history of Tel-Aviv at Stanford University Libraries includes a number of digitized books, brochures and serials that are now available online. The quality of the material in general is rather good. Some of it is "grey literature" that is hard to find in libraries. Most of the texts are in Hebrew, some in Yiddish. There are some German and English titles too. Some examples:

The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at University of Pennsylvania started the public podcast series Jews in Business: Myth and Reality. Three Podcast are available at the moment:

1. Jonathan Karp - A Head Without a Body? Reconstructing the History of Jews in Business
2. Evelyne Oliel-Grausz - Kinship, Commerce, and Trade Networks: The Early Modern Sephardic Diaspora
3. Adam Teller - Before Rothschild: Jewish Businessmen in Eighteenth Century Eastern Europe

The conference Jews of Arab Culture, 1948-2009 will be held from 22 - 24 June 2009 at Cambridge University. The conference is organized by the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (CMJR) and the Department of Middle Eastern Studies.

"While the study of medieval and early modern Judaeo-Arabic culture & literature is a comparatively well established field in Western academia, there exists so far no comprehensive study of the more recent Arabic literature written by Jews. Central aspects of the last sixty years of Jewish-Arabic culture and literature have not yet been systematically surveyed and studied.
The conference will attempt to fill this gap and explore various aspects of the process of 'De-Arabization' of the literary culture of "Arab Jews" since the 1940s. How did Jews (Jewish writers) who emigrated to Israel from different parts of the Arab world react or even resist this transformational process and how did it impact on the Palestinian literature? The conference will consist of six sessions, five of which will be dedicated to a specific region in the Arab world and explore the literature and culture within the respective Jewish community:

The fourth issue of the online-journal Medaon. Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung is available. The journal is published by Hatikva - Bildungs- und Begegnungsstätte für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur in Sachsen e.V..

An article on Digital Jewish Collections and the "Salon Jewish Studies" project was published in that issue.

Content

Articles http://www.medaon.de/artikel.html

Anja Horstmann | „Judenaufnahmen fürs Archiv“ – Das dokumentarische Filmmaterial „Asien in Mitteleuropa“, 1942

Ingo Loose | Die Ambivalenz des Authentischen. Juden, Holocaust und Antisemitismus im deutschen Film nach 1945

Sabine Haustein, Anja Waller | Jüdische Settlements in Europa. Ansätze einer transnationalen sozial-, geschlechter- und ideenhistorischen Forschung

Victoria Hegner | Wenn Migranten religiös werden – Die „Renaissance“ des Chassidismus und die Rolle der baalai teshuva am Beispiel von Chicago

Miscellanea http://www.medaon.de/miszellen.html

Frank Wolff | Historiography on the General Jewish Labor Bund. Traditions, Tendencies and Expectations

Jana Mikota | Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen – wieder entdeckt: Bertha Badt-Strauss auf den Spuren vergessener Jüdinnen in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren

Sources http://www.medaon.de/quellen.html

Edgar Bönisch, Birgit Seemann | Jüdische Pflegegeschichte in Frankfurt am Main

Frank Schlöffel | Digitale jüdische Quellen und ihre Sammlung im Online-Portal Salon Jüdische Studien

Heike Liebsch | „Holocaust and Heroism Memorial House“. Ein kleines Privatmuseum in Ariel wartet auf seine wissenschaftliche Auswertung

Peter Ambros | Was am Wichtigsten im Leben ist, geht dich nichts an! – Die Welt der Kinder der Überlebenden

Education http://www.medaon.de/bildung.html

Michaela Baetz | „Wenn Mokkatassen sprechen – Mediale Konzepte gegen Antisemitismus“. Eine Projektbeschreibung oder „Das ist was ganz anderes als ein Geschichtsbuch“

And reviews http://www.medaon.de/rezension.html

Help through the cultural heritage protection organization „Blue Shield“
A bus full of archivists and conservators left Den Haag on April 26, 2009 morning to support the recovery and rescue of material at the collapsed Cologne Historical Archive (CHA). 75 experts from France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and America will help for a week.
On May 5, 2009 it was reported that in four days nearly 2 (shelf)km were processed. Besides compliments, some supportes at the scene also express critical points (extract from Archivalia May 4, 2009):

"I noticed that German archivists see their job mainly as administration not tradition (store and prepare heritage)…
Double or not relevant material is not separated from the inventory, so the collections are unorganized and confus. In Germany not much of the material is assorted and rearranged, many documents are in original packages (as they came) and rivets and clips are not removed systematically.
The German colleagues did a good job on organizing transport and accommodation for 80 people from abroad.
More supervision during the work was needed. Some of the volunteers had no experiences in archival work and were confused by the registration of the documents. Nobody checked our work, it seemed that the organization focuses on speed. This was successful in any case, in four days, nearly 2 (shelf)km processed!"

Archival collections recoverd from the intact archive cellar on April 21, 2009
The fire department recovered 850 (shelf) m of inventory from the intact archive cellar of the collapsed building – mostly newspapers but also parts of private papers and collections.
Among others the personal collections of Wallraf and Schneider-Wessling were recovered intactly from archive cellar:
" .... The rescued material is in proper condition, the speaker of the fire department Daniel Leupold announced. The ceiling of the room was able to bear the weight while other parts collapsed. The fire department recovered the material through the back of the building with the help of a seven meter ramp and rolling containers.
The complete collections of the architect Prof. Erich Schneider-Wessling and the author Günter Wallraf were stored in this cellar. Wallraf received the message that his 200 boxes with material were recovered while arguing with lawyers. ‘Today, I celebrate my second birthday’ Wallraf announced. Wallraf calls it lucky because he just needed a part of his material for a current project.
Schneider-Wessling is also happy that his work from the last 50 years is accessible again, originals of plans, competition papers, sketches and much more…” (Koelner Stadtanzeiger, April 21, 2009)

Former Summaries
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIV, Tuesday April 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIII, April 2nd 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XII, March 24th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XI, March 21th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse X, March 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IX, March 18th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VIII, March 17th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VII, March 15th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VI, March 13th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse V, March 12th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IV, March 11th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse III, March 10th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse II, March 09th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse I, March 08 th 2009

SEE ALSO
COLOGNE HISTORICAL ARCHIVE - POSSIBILITIES TO HELP
International Blue Shield Mission

GERMAN
http://archiv.twoday.net/topics/Kommunalarchive

Solidarity group on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=58486607084