This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.
Woman in a mob cap sorting chocolates into wooden boxes, NYPL Digital Collections ID: 439931
Rabbi Debbi Prinz lives in New York City and lectures about chocolate and religion around the world. She also blogs at On the Chocolate Trail, The Forward, JW Food & Wine, and ReformJudaism.org.
I use my local branch as well as the Schwarzman Building. To maximize my time at the 42nd Street Library, I generally photograph the documents. I try to get to the Library when I have a particular question to look into or when I have accumulated a bunch of references. Later I read and file the photos at home. Truthfully, I always feel behind with my list and also at “processing” what I have gathered at the library. Also, I keep a bunch of the book request forms at home so that I can fill them out as I find a reference I want to review.
What's your favorite spot at the Library?
I love sitting in the Rose Main Reading Room. More recently I settled into the Dorot Jewish Division since I learned that my requests could be delivered to me there, too. It is quiet and the staff is extremely helpful. (Maybe I should keep that secret?)
When did you first get the idea for your research project?
My current project started with chocolate, specifically questions around the chocolate in New York’s plentiful babkas.
What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?
That ancient Egyptians enjoyed sophisticated skills in baking leavened breads. And, their bakeries and breweries were located next to the other, with beer and bread providing significant sources of nutrition.
How do you maintain your research momentum?
I just plug away. I also balance the research with selecting and trying recipes as well as writing short form pieces. This pushes me to to clarify my thoughts and questions. In 2019 I baked over 50 distinct recipes and wrote more than 10 stories.
What's your guilty pleasure distraction?
Streaming videos and a nibble of chocolate.
After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?
I like to walk, do yoga, and explore New York with my husband.
Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?
Yes. Here are three things I happened to learn along the way, mentioned by kindly NYPL staff.
My Brooklyn Library and NYPL cards are linked.
I can request extensions on my holds by emailing or calling Dorot.
I also sometimes request books in advance by emailing Dorot.
Childhood is an ideal time to learn a new language. Check out these free sites featuring games, puzzles, stories, and more designed to help children learn and practice languages. Although most of the following sites are geared towards kids, they are enjoyable for users of any age group.
Accessible with an NYPL Library card and focuses on reading. The site is arranged by topics, and books are supplemented by puzzles and other activities. The content is available in English and Spanish.
This site has free language practice games and interactive exercises for dozens of languages. It's designed for use by independent students and/or in classrooms.
A free language learning site and app with lessons in nine languages. Lessons are short and the site emphasizes daily practice; users can also assess their language level with exams.
This site from the British Council has games, stories, and videos to help native speakers of Chinese, Arabic, Russian, French and Spanish learn English. The site includes resources for parents and teachers.
Access is free with your Library card and four-digit PIN; it is also available as an app for mobile download. Choose from 70 language learning options, including many less common languages, as well as English for speakers of various languages.
You'll find various free learning programs on their website, including the “Oh Noah!” videos, designed for children to learn Spanish vocabulary through activities and games.
This resource is accessible with your Library card number and features books, puzzles, music, and games for children, including resources in Spanish and French.
This free site for Yiddish language learning is designed for children. Through colorful animations, users learn vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing.
An olive tree illustrates Maror (bitter herbs) in The Don Ferrante Mahzor haggadah. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 2050580
“And you shall explain to your child on that day …..” (Exodus 13:8)
The Passover evening celebration—the Seder (order)—fulfills the biblical command to recount the story of yetsi’at Mitzrayim, the exodus from ancient Egypt. The biblical text tells of the arrival of the Bene-Yisrael (children of Israel) in ancient Egypt to escape famine, their descent into slavery and their miraculous liberation. At God’s behest, Moses demands that Pharoah release the slaves. After each refusal, a plague descends upon the land. Finally, Pharoah agrees to let the slaves travel into the wilderness. On the night of the final plague, the ancient Israelites prepare for their departure. Gathering in their homes, dressed for the journey, they hurriedly eat roasted lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
The celebration’s narrative (haggadah) is structured around a fixed order of rituals and symbols which dramatize the movement of the ancient Israelites from slavery to freedom. The seder table is set with unleavened bread (matzah, the bread of affliction), bitter herbs (horseradish or romaine lettuce) and a green vegetable (for spring) to be dipped in saltwater (tears of the slaves). Four cups of wine for each participant reflect four promises of redemption. A shankbone represents the lamb sacrifice; a roasted egg, the festival offering.
Every ritual and symbol should prompt a child at the table to ask "Why is this night different?".
This year the Library will be unable to display pages from the magnificent Rose family seder books. But, from our Digital Collections and from around the world we can still experience the beauty of illustrated haggadot.
Title page of the Hamburg Haggadah (1731). NYPL Digital Collections ID 1244021
The library's digital collections provide access to the manuscript of the Hamburg Haggadah and to the Don Ferrante Mahzor which includes the Passover haggadah.
The desire to illuminate this ubiquitous liturgy is still alive and well. The Polish artist Arthur Szyck drew and published his haggadah during the dark days of the 1930's.
Avner Moriah, an Israeli artist, has also created an illustrated haggadah, Hagadat Moriyah
The Morgan library not only digitized the Rose Haggadah, illustrated by the contemporary artist Barbara Wolff, but has included a film documenting its creation and has mounted an online exhibition focused on her work.
The haggadah does not tell a tale tied merely to one event. Rather, it provides a paradigm, not only for the journey of the Jewish people, but for the experience of humanity. In the words of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks “No story has had a greater influence in inspiring revolution or evolution toward a just and humane society. It is the West’s great meta-narrative of liberty” (The Jonathan Sacks Haggada).
Ethnic NewsWatch is a database of 477 publications, including scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines, that focus on African-American, African, Arab, Asian/Pacific Islander, Caribbean, European, Jewish, Latinx, Multi-Ethnic, and Native communities. The publications are largely in English, with 18 in Spanish, and a few other languages. They range from the well-known to the highly localized and somewhat obscure. Although some publications are indexed as far back as 1959, coverage is particularly strong from the 1990’s and 00’s onward.
Ethnic NewsWatch is a terrific resource, particularly for hard-to-find, small local publications as well as academic journals for which physical copies are not easily accessible. Here you can search publications’ contents remotely, and in many cases get the full text in a few different formats. Because the database is text-based, though, it doesn’t provide images of the pages like other databases such as PressReader; therefore you may not be able to find images for ads, photographs, or other visuals here. For those, you may need to place an InterLibrary Loanrequest if NYPL does not own a physical copy of the issue(s) you need.
Using the Database
Go to the login page and click “Connect to database”
Log in with your Library card and four-digit PIN.
(Forgot your Library card number or PIN? Contact Ask-NYPL Don’t have a Library card yet? Get one here
Browse by Publication
Choose “Publications” from the top menu for an alphabetical list of titles.
Narrow your search by:
Source type (type of publication: scholarly journal, newspaper, magazine, etc.)
Publication subject (ethnic group or topic)
Language
Publisher
Click “more” at the bottom of each option for a more detailed list.
Search for Content
Enter your article title or author (if you have it) in the search box.
Or, enter one or two keywords that relate to your research topic. Choose “Advanced search” for more options to narrow your search.
Here is an example of results from a keyword search:
You can print, download, cite, and save content in a variety of formats, as shown on the top of this page on the left.
Unorthodox is generating plenty of buzz. “Captivating”, “devastating”, “stunning”, and “binge-worthy” are just a few of the accolades the show has earned since its premiere on March 26. The story follows Esty (Shira Haas), a young woman who flees her tight-knit Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn for Berlin. It’s based on Deborah Feldman’s bestselling memoir, Unorthdox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Audiences and critics are talking about the show’s compelling performances, its use of Yiddish, and its depiction of Hasidic life. An accompanying documentary, Making Unorthodox, provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look. Did you know that the show’s plot differs significantly from Feldman’s memoir, which is just as thrilling? Find out more by reading the e-book.
Libraries—especially public libraries—often play a role in these stories as (forbidden) places providing free access to secular knowledge. Visiting a public library is not allowed in ultra-Orthodox communities; neither is the internet. As a result, people who grow up without these resources have a lot of catching up to do when they enter the secular world. Whether it is self-education or practical skills, The New York Public Library has resources to support people going through transitions of all kinds: free books and internet access, and tools for studying for a GED, school or work exam; finding a job or career; learning English or computer skills. The organization Footsteps also plays a vital role in supporting those who are considering going, or are already, “off the derech”.
Want to explore these themes more? Grab your library card and dive in. Nearly all of the following are available as e-books. (Get a Library card here / Get help here)
An unexpected benefit of quarantine is the boom in online classes and learning opportunities. Exercising your brain and interacting with others can supply a much-needed dose of inspiration in times of uncertainty and stress.
Language courses are just one way to start (or continue) your Ladino studies. There is something online for everyone, including Library e-books on history, culture and literature; digitized primary sources, recipes, and music.
Learn about Ladino
Ladino is a Jewish language also known as Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, Djudio, Spaniolit, or Spanyol, or Muestro Spanyol. It is a variety of Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, that through migration has come to be spoken in many different countries. Ladino preserves aspects of medieval Spanish, combined with elements of Turkish, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, French, Italian, and Arabic, as well as already present Hebrew elements. It was historically written in Solitreo, a cursive Hebrew “Rashi” script.
New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish Division is an unparalleled repository of the rich and comprehensive collection of the American Jewish press in most of the languages spoken by the Jews who made their new home in North America over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes titles in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Ladino, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, Russian, etc. The collection was forming chronologically with the development of the Jewish diaspora in the US and the simultaneous building of NYPL’s all-inclusive serials holdings, along with ongoing preservation and microfilming efforts at the Library. The Dorot Jewish collection is particularly strong in periodicals that were published in New York City.
In 2012 the Manhattan Research Libraries Initiative (MaRLI) partners represented by NYPL, Columbia University and NYU joined efforts and began working together on contributing the most essential Jewish American periodicals to the Historical Jewish Press Project hosted by the National Library of Israel. The NYPL holdings currently constitute a fundamental component of “The Jewish Press in the USA” section, with most of the titles published in New York. 17 titles in English, Yiddish, and Ladino with an astonishing amount of 706,000 pages have been digitized, and 15 out of 17 titles have been made available online; yet several other periodicals are currently in the process of digitization. The MaRLI consortium’s contribution constitutes almost 25% of the total 2.9 million pages from 413 periodicals available on the website. This impressive fact just underlines how crucial the NYPL’s contribution to the JPress project is! The project is currently in phase four of its progress and the next phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2021.
In order to understand the importance of the initiative, it would be helpful to have a brief overview of the history of the American Jewish Press as an essential primary source for the studies of American Jewish life.
In the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, New York City was a point of destination for hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants and represented a vibrant center of intense communal, religious, cultural, and literary life. New York was a dynamic scene for the diversity of Jewish political and social movements. Naturally, Yiddish served as the language of the local press for the newcomers. It related to the immigrants’ needs and traditions and facilitated their entrance to American life. Between 1881 and the late 1920s, over 2.3 million Jews from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania settled in the US, and approximately 2 million read the Yiddish newspapers. No wonder that at the peak of the popularity of the Yiddish press in the 1910s-1920s NYC alone produced several most important Yiddish dailies, such as Forverts (Forward), Der Tog (The Day), Morgen Zshurnal (The Jewish Morning Journal), Yidishes Tageblat (The Jewish Daily News), Di Varhayt (The Truth), and Frayhayt (Freedom)—six out of a total 11 Yiddish dailies that were published in the US at that time.
Despite often opposite political views (such as Socialism, Zionism, assimilationism, and their variations), these newspapers were seen as an important forum for many distinguished Jewish intellectuals and writers and presented a stage for innovative trends in the Yiddish literature. The newspapers were a mirror of how the Jewish population reacted to often tragic historical events of the twentieth century, such as the persecutions of Jews, revolutions, the rise of Nazism in Europe, WWI and WWII, the Cold War, etc.
Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Greece and Balkan countries began to arrive in the US in the 1880s, and by the early 1920s, the Sephardic population in the country reached approximately 30,000 people. Two-thirds of the immigrants resided in New York. Several weekly newspapers in Judeo Spanish (Ladino) such as Lah Amerikah (The America), La Vara (The Staff), El Progresso (The Progress), and La Luz (The Light) were produced in New York City to accommodate the needs of the immigrant community.
The Anglo-Jewish press in the United States established itself as early as 1843 with the publication of the first American Jewish periodical Occident and American Jewish Advocate (Philadelphia). In the second half of the 19th century, during a period of mass immigration of German-speaking Jews to the US, the circulation of the English-language Jewish press outnumbered the immigrant newspapers in German and Hebrew. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglo-Jewish press was a leading voice of the assimilated Jews in the US. However, the striking boost in popularity of the new Yiddish press in the following decades presented a real threat to this monopoly. The English press perceived Yiddish editions as competitors and obstacles to assimilation.
As it happened, in the first half of the 20th century, the Anglo Jewish press in the US gave up its primary role in the Jewish community to Yiddish, even though several important weekly and monthly periodicals were in English such as B’nai B’rith Messenger (Los Angeles), American Hebrew (New York), The Menorah (New York), continued to be published, and attracted the best authors from the American Jewish English-speaking intellectual elite. Only with the decline of the Yiddish press in the second half of the twentieth century and with ongoing assimilation were Jewish periodical editions in the English language gradually able to reclaim their leading role in the American Jewish community, with an expanded range of interests, and achieved high levels of circulations.
All these trends in the history of the Jewish Press in the United States become much more distinctively visible with the development of the Historical Jewish Press project as more and more periodicals’ content appear in open access. The project unveils new possibilities for online research and scholars from around the world welcome this opportunity with gratitude. And they are anticipating more content in free access! Our colleagues from the National Library of Israel have confirmed that access to the site has shown a 30 % increase during the pandemic crises.
The leading role of NYPL in this initiative demonstrates itself in hundreds of thousands of digitized pages, the historical and informational value of the editions, quality of journalism, and diversity of the immigrant press. Below are links to the JPress website and NYPL highlights (in some instances the NYPL holdings were complimented by the holdings from the other libraries, such as the National Library of Israel, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and Spertus Institute in Chicago).
Historical Jewish Press (JPress) website is hosted by the National Library of Israel
Yiddish Newspapers in New York Available from NYPL
Forverts (Forward)
Almost from the very beginning of its publication in 1897 Forverts stood out as the most successful and popular Yiddish daily newspaper. It was also rightfully considered among the most widely read foreign-language newspapers in the US in general. Although socialist by its ideology, it was a general interest daily that welcomed the diversity of opinions and adopted a very emphatic and engaging way to communicate with the audience. Its visionary editor Abraham Cahan implemented a high level of editing and skillfully managed the balance between popular taste and literary quality. Many novels and short stories by prominent Yiddish writers such as Itzhak Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade were first published in serialized format in Forverts, and contemporary scholars frequently browse the newspaper nowadays in search of their literary gems:
Historical Forverts building featured on the front page of the Forverts newspaper, April 22, 1911.
Der Tog (The Day)(partially available online)
This publication began in 1914 and was the second most widely read Yiddish newspaper in the US. In contrast to Forverts, it was a liberal and pro-Zionist newspaper and became best known for publishing sophisticated literary works by authors who were often previously rejected by Forverts. Among Der Tog’s authors were Sholem Aleichem, Yehoyesh, Leon Kobrin and others. Der Tog was also the first Yiddish newspaper to employ female editorial staff and writers, such as Anna Margolin and Sarah Smith.
Di Varhayt (The Truth)
Another successful daily newspaper, it was published from 1905-1919 and aligned itself with the socialist and Zionist movements. In 1919 it merged with Der Tog.
Yidishes Tageblat (Jewish Daily News)
Running from 1885-1928, this was the oldest Yiddish daily newspaper of the conservative and conservative profile that adapted a highly Germanized Yiddish language. In 1928, this newspaper was merged with Der Morgen Zshurnal.
Der Morgen Zshurnal(The Jewish Morning Journal) Established by Jacob Saphirstein and published from 1901-1971, it was the only morning Yiddish newspaper and a strong distinguished voice of conservative Orthodox Jewish immigrants. In 1952 the newspaper merged with Der Tog and changed its name to Der Tog, Morgen Zshurnal.
Jewish Newspapers in English Available from NYPL
The B’nai B’rith Messenger(Los Angeles)
During almost a century of its existence (1897-1995), it was one of the foremost sources of the history of Jewish people in Los Angeles. This bi-monthly and later weekly edition was named after the famous B’nai B’rith Reform synagogue in Los Angeles.
“A family journal of commerce, politics, religion, and literature, devoted to the interests of the American Israelites,” it was published weekly in New York by Robert Lyon between 1849-1958. It was one of the early successful editions of communal newspapers in English.
One of the first issues of the early American Jewish newspaper "The Asmonean" , November 2, 1849
Thiswas the first American Ladino periodical. This weekly edition was established by Moshe Gadol, a brilliant immigrant from Bulgaria, who settled in New York. At the peak of its popularity, the circulation of Lah Amerikah reached 1,000 copies. The newspaper encouraged communication between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi community and some sections of the newspaper were published in Yiddish.
Front page of the Lah Amerikah, first American Ladino newspaper, May 30, 1913
El Progresso, La Boz del Pueblo, La Époka de Nu York Thiswas a pro-socialist Sephardi newspaper published in New York in 1915-1920 by Morris Nissim. He started this weekly newspaper under the title El Progress (The Progress), but soon changed it to La Boz del Pueblo (The Voice of the People). In 1919, the newspaper changed its name again to La Epoka de Nu York (The New York Epoch).
Bibliography:
Ben-Ur, Aviva. “In Search of the American Ladino Press: A Bibliographical Survey, 1910–1948.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, vol. 21, 2001, pp. 10–52.
Cohen, Nathan. “The Yiddish Press and Yiddish Literature: A Fertile but Complex Relationship.” Modern Judaism, vol. 28, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–172.
Dissentshik, Ido Joseph. “New York’s Two Yiddish Dailies: ‘The Day Morgen Journal and ‘Forward’ – a 1966 Study.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 45e–52e.
Ehrlich, Evelyn. The American Jewish Newspapers Digitization Project. Proceedings of the 50th Annual Conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries (Washington, DC – June 21-24, 2015).
Goren, Arthur. “The Jewish Press in the U.S.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 4e–22e.
Goren, Arthur. “Orthodox Politics, Republican and Jewish: Jacob Saphirstein and the Morgen Zhurnal.” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies,1981, pp. 63–71.
Hoffman, Matthew. “The Red Divide: The Conflict between Communists and Their Opponents in the American Yiddish Press.” American Jewish History, vol. 96, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–31.
Madison, Charles A. Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing on American Culture. New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1976.
Michels, Tony. “‘Speaking to Moyshe’: The Early Socialist Yiddish Press and Its Readers.” Jewish History, vol. 14, no. 1, 2000, pp. 51–82.
Nahshon, Gad. “The Ladino Press in the United States.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 53e–57e.
Rischin, Moses. The Promised City: New York's Jews 1870-1914. Cambridge, Mass, 1978
Soltes, Mordecai. “The Yiddish Press - an Americanizing Agency.” The American Jewish Year Book, vol. 26, 1924, pp. 165–372.
Actress Bertha Kalich, author (with Tsvi-Hirsh Rubinstein) of Mayn leben, a memoir serialized in Der Tog. NYPL Digital Collection, Image ID: TH-25321
[Updated February 16, 2022] It is astounding both how many women have written in Yiddish, and how thoroughly they have been marginalized. An informal survey identified nearly 900 women who wrote and published their work in Yiddish. Yet of the 2% of Yiddish literature that has been translated, most is by male writers. Many historical anthologies of Yiddish literature in translation are all-male. Those do that include women have often lumped them into the gendered category of “female poets”, discounting women’s incredible contributions to Yiddish poetry as well as prose. For an incisive look at women’s poetry in Yiddish, read Kathryn Hellerstein’s A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987. Find anthologies of Yiddish literature in English translation, including those that feature and highlight women’s writing, in the translation section of the new Yiddish Research LibGuide.
Building upon the pioneering works of scholars such as Irena Klepfisz, new translations of writing by women in Yiddish are reaching a wider audience than ever. Recent translation efforts are bringing women’s voices in Yiddish to the forefront, and making their works accessible for reading, teaching, and scholarship. Prose works in particular, such as novels, short stories, essays, and memoirs—many long buried in microfilmed newspapers and archives—are finally getting their due.
Where to Find Yiddish Writing by Women in English Translation
In geveb
This innovative, online, peer-reviewed journal of Yiddish Studies regularly publishes translations as well as critical and pedagogical pieces about Yiddish and gender.
Bridges
This legendary Jewish feminist journal (now defunct) was among the first to publish Yiddish literature by women in English translation. Read online from home or find print volumes in our catalog.
Blitz and other stories, translated from Yiddish by Dorothee van Tendeloo; edited by Sylvia Paskin
Diamonds[Brilyantn]. translated from the Yiddish and with an introduction by Heather Valencia
Dance of the Demons [Sheydim-tants]. Translated from Yiddish by Maurice Carr; introduction by Ilan Stavans afterword by Anita Norich; biographical essays by Maurice Carr and Hazel Karr
Deborah [Sheydim-tants]. With a new introduction by Clive Sinclair; translated by Maurice Carr
Years Have Sped By= Zaynen yorn gelofn [bilingual autobiography and poetry]; forrede un iberzetsungen oyf English fun Yudl Ḳohen; [edited by Jeanette Cohen].
For whom do I sing my songs Far ṿemen zing ikh mayne lider. an araynfir un opshatsung fun Shalom Shṭern; iberzetsungen oyf English fun Yudl Ḳohen; [redaḳṭirṭ fun Dzshaneṭ Ḳohen]. Bilingual text.
God Hid His Face. Translated from the Yiddish by Barnett Zumoff, Aaron Kramer, Marek Kanter, and others; with an introductory essay by Emanuel S. Goldsmith.
Ṭiḳṭiner, Rivḳah bat Meʼir. Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women; edited with an introduction and commentary by Frauke von Rohden; translation by Samuel Spinner; translation of introduction and commentary by Maruce Tszorf.
The new book Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People by Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy is an inspiring, fascinating read. For someone like me, born in the former Soviet Union, Sharansky’s life epitomizes the just struggle of the Soviet Jews for the essential principles of freedom and the right to immigrate to Israel and to other countries. He was one of those activists who were not afraid to challenge the loyalty to the regime and did it with uncompromising bravery and determination, and won, despite all difficulties, arrests, interrogations, and nine long years of incarceration in the Soviet prisons. Sharansky, a leading charismatic refusniks[1] figure, was able to mobilize millions of supporters around the globe, and particularly in Israel and the United States, and soon, as a result, the powerful refusnik movement under the slogan “Let my people go” paved a route to the mass exodus and entirely new future for over two million Soviet Jews.
The book is not exactly a book of memoirs, as Sharansky explains in the introduction. It is rather a story of his life’s “most important conversation: the ongoing dialog between Israel and the Jewish people”[2]. With an impeccable balance of aptitude, openness, energy, optimism, Jewish humor, love for the people and dedication he describes three major chapters of his life: “Nine years in prison,” “Nine years in Israel politics,” and “Nine years in the Jewish Agency.” He refers to them as three perspectives that he carefully developed during his life journey. Thus, this book is a result of his personal three-dimensional explorations about relationships between Israel and other Jewish communities: from behind the Iron Curtain, from inside the Israeli government, and from the point of view of a high-rank representative of the Diaspora’s interests.
And he was never alone in this journey. The title of the book is symbolic on many levels. But the most important message of Sharansky’s story is that in his work, mission and struggle for freedom he was always with the Jewish people and they were with him.
The first part of the book is dedicated to Sharansky’s upbringing and the shaping of his Jewish identity within the Soviet system: first in his native city of Donetsk and then, in the late 1960s-'70s in Moscow, in the circle of his intellectual and soulmate fighters. They were inspired by Andrey Sakharov, the prominent human rights activist, and united around a common goal—struggle for the exodus—but, at the same time, against the entire system of oppression. This part of the book culminates in the period of Sharansky’s imprisonment (1977-1986) followed by his eventual release in February 1986, during Gorbachev’s Perestroyka. His incredible spiritual resistance and stamina are well articulated in the title of one of the central chapters of the book: “Living Free in Prison.” The chapter evokes the sense of universal solidarity and international outcry of support on behalf of the Soviet Jews, including a 250,000 rally in Washington D.C. in 1987 that further fortified the moral victory of the movement.
The second and third parts of the book reflect on Sharansky’s life in Israel and his involvement in Israeli political and government work. He has continued to carry out his main mission of facilitating the return of the Soviet Jews to Israel, representing their rights and consolidating the dialog between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora around the world. Sharansky engages the readers with candid insights into the challenges and accomplishments of this period of his career.
Sharansky’s statements resonate profoundly with one of the most important and distinctive parts in the Dorot Jewish Division—the American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection. This magnificent collection is a result of a 25-year project initiated by the AJC in the late 1960s which came to its conclusion in the 1990s when the collection was received by the NYPL. The collection includes over 600 hours of audiotaped interviews and more than 100,000 pages of text transcripts recorded from 2,250 individuals. Many prominent personalities such as political figures David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, playwright Arthur Miller, historian Salo Baron, violinist Itzhak Perlman contributed their stories to the project.
The collection has been partially digitized and 350 transcripts are available online, while many other materials from this collection are accessible onsite by appointment. One of the special categories within the collection is particularly dedicated to the interviews with emigres from the former Soviet Union who arrived in the United States in the 1970s. It provides a unique glimpse into the emigres’ experiences with anti-Semitism and persecutions in the former Soviet Union and their often dramatic stories of the exodus. Additionally, the collection includes many interviews with prominent American activists, diplomates, lawyers, academics, and writers who were instrumental in organizing support and fundraising campaigns on the American side. The collection contains an audio recording of the AJC Freedom Sunday Dinner including a presentation to Natan Sharansky of the American Jewish Committee's American Liberties Medallion that took place on December 6, 1987—the day of the unprecedented rally of solidarity with Soviet Jews in Washington D.C.
The phenomenon of the extraordinary movement was explicitly summarized by Sharansky in his new book: “The struggle to save Soviet Jewry was unique. It was global, involving Jewish communities on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It was pluralistic, mobilizing French Communists and British aristocrats, pious rabbis and assimilating lawyers, American patriots and Zionist activists, countercultural hippies, and Establishment leaders. And it was focused. […] The shared mission came down to three Hebrew words: shlach et ami, let my people go”[3].
Sharansky'sbook, Never Alone, is available as an e-book from the New York Public Library and print editions are coming soon. The Library also holds all previous books authored by Natan Sharansky and a very comprehensive collection of the printed literature about the movement to free the Soviet Jews.
The New York Public Library is pleased to present a live conversation between David Remnick and Natan Sharansky:
[1] Refusnik (from the word “refusal”) is an unofficial term used to identify individuals who were denied visas to immigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel and other countries
[2] Sharansky, Natan, and Gil Troy. Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People. New York: PublicAffairs, 2020. P. 3.
On October 22, 2020 Doc Chatters explored themes of memory, trauma, and resilience through the oral history of one Holocaust survivor.
Eli G. Rochelson interview transcript, page 15, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, 1974.
An ongoing series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs a NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Seven, Meri-Jane Rochelson, Professor Emerita of English literature at Florida International University, spoke with NYPL’s Lyudmila Sholokhova about her father Dr. Eli G. Rochelson’s audio interview in the American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection. With attendees, they explored the emotional and intellectual power of listening to a survivor’s story and analyzed how audio recordings, transcripts, and annotations can reveal different layers of memory and experience.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Seven: Primary Sources
Eli G. Rochelson’s 1974 interview is part of NYPL’s American Jewish Committee (AJC) Oral History Collection. Publicly available transcripts and audio files can be accessed on the Library’s Digital Collections. Interviews with Holocaust survivors constitute an important component of the AJC’s Oral History Collection—it includes 250 recorded Holocaust testimonies that amount to over 10% of its content.
While Eli G. Rochelson’s audio interview has been a part of the AJC Oral History Collection since 1974, the transcript that he was editing after the interview remained a part of the family archive for over 45 years and was not reunited with the original audio until recently. Over the past several years, his daughter (and featured Doc Chat speaker) Meri-Jane Rochelson completed a careful reading and additional editing of the transcript and donated a digitized version of the transcript to NYPL.
Below are selections of the transcript that were discussed in this Doc Chat episode.
Eli G. Rochelson interview transcript, page 11, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, 1974. Eli G. Rochelson interview transcript, page 14, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, 1974. Eli G. Rochelson interview transcript, page 15, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, 1974. Eli G. Rochelson interview transcript, page 16, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, 1974.
Audio files for Eli Rochelson's interview are not yet available for public access on NYPL's Digital Collections, but we are happy to provide the clips featured in this episode to educators looking to use them in their classrooms. Please email Lyudmila Sholokhova, Curator of the Dorot Jewish Collection, to request access.
Special thanks to Meri-Jane Rochelson for granting the Library permission to share these important documents.
Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Edited by Martin Gilbert. Textual and historical notes by Dina Porat. Translated by Jerzy Michalowicz. (Harvard University Press, 1991).
For additional guidance on Holocaust related research, check out these NYPL resources:
Learn more about the Dorot Jewish Division at the Steven A. Schwarzman Building here.
Teaching With Holocaust Testimony
Meri-Jane Rochelson presented a series of questions that can guide teachers using this material in the classroom with students at a variety of levels. They include:
How are the experiences of listening and reading different?
What is the role of editing in these transcripts? What differences do we find between immediate audio files and later written transcript changes or additions?
How do we interpret unfamiliar speech patterns or handwriting?
Why is it important to tell stories of trauma? To tell other kinds of stories?
What are the benefits of memoirs, whether oral or written, as evidence? What are their limitations? How can we use them with both the benefits and limitations in mind?
How do you want to be remembered?
Eli G. Rochelson: A Short Biography
Eli G. Rochelson was born in 1907 in Kaunas, a city in contemporary Lithuania which was then part of the Russian Empire. Married and with a young child, he completed his medical degree in 1940 and became a physician. During the Nazi occupation, he and his family were forced with the other Jews of the city into the Kovno ghetto. In 1944, after the ghetto was liquidated, Rochelson and his son were sent to Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau; his son was soon taken to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. Rochelson's wife was taken to a camp at Stutthof, and died of starvation during a forced march at the end of the war. After the liberation, Rochelson was one of the physicians who helped establish the hospital at the displaced persons camp at Landsberg-am-Lech. In 1946 he came to the United States, where he remarried, had two children, and re-established family life as well as his career in medicine. Eli Rochelson died in 1984.
More Doc Chat
Doc Chat takes place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Upcoming episodes will tackle women photographers and modernism, the landscape of Brooklyn's industrial waterfront, and more. Check them out on NYPL's calendar, and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the NYPL blog shortly after the program, so be sure to check back regularly to keep on top of the Doc Chat conversation.
It’s Chanukah time, the joyful holiday of light and resilience, celebration of the miracle of the oil, and it is a perfect occasion for us to shine a spotlight on some of the gems from the Dorot Jewish Division’s collections.
The Library’s stunning illuminated manuscript the David Bar Pesah Mahzor[i] was produced in Germany in the 14th century and is named after its scribe and decorator David Bar Pesah who was prominent for his distinctive style of iconography. The manuscript is also known as the Padua Ashkenazi Mahzor since it previously belonged to the Jewish community of Padua in Italy. The manuscript was donated to the NYPL by the manufacturer and philanthropist Louis Rabinowitz in the mid-20th century. The magnificent codex of 1,156 vellum pages bound in two solid volumes, in addition to standard liturgical texts, contains numerous examples of religious poems (piyutim) aimed to enhance festive synagogue services on the Holidays and special Shabbats, including two important poems for the Chanukah. Initial words of many prayers and poems in the Mahzor are marked with distinctive calligraphy in black and red ink, elaborative decorations, and, in some instances, exquisite full-page multi-color illuminated word panels.
One of the piyutim in the Mahzor is “Odekha ki anafta” (“I will praise You for though You were angry with me, Your anger was turned away”) is a hymn authored by the liturgical poet Joseph Ben Solomon of Carcassonne (France, 11th century). Written in the form of a ninefold alphabetical acrostic, it was traditionally performed on the first Shabbat of Chanukah. Its text is the author’s poetical rendition based on several sources, but mainly on Sefer ha-Makabim (Maccabees I) and the 10th century Sefer Josippon describing the disasters imposed on the Jews by the Greeks during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 168 B.C.E. and the following defeat of the Greeks.
Odekhah ki anafta, hymn for first Shabbat of Chanukah.
In the David Bar Pesah Mahzor, the poem opens up with a large initial word “odekha”. The four characters of the Hebrew word are featured in distinctive red ink adorned with sophisticated floral elements—tiny leaves and flowers placed inside and outside the letters. Beginnings of each line follow the order of the Hebrew alphabet. Because of the nature of this acrostic, each initial letter of the line is repeated nine times, but their positioning creates a sophisticated calligraphic pattern consistent throughout the entire poem.
Odekha ki anafta is followed by another Chanukah hymn intended to be performed at the second Shabbat of the Chanukah holiday—Shene zetim (“Two olive trees”). It was created by the famous Jewish philosopher and poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Spain, 11th century). The symbol of two olive trees evokes a connection to the Book of Zechariah traditionally read during this Shabbat. The two olive trees are mentioned as they stood on the left and right sides of the Menorah thus emphasizing the rededication and redemption of the Temple.
Shene Zetim, hymn for second Shabbat of Chanukah.
The initial two words are featured in large characters in bold black ink. They are framed with numerous tiny red dots that add significance and elegance to the representation of the poem. The initials of the author's first name are incorporated in the acrostic at the beginning of each stanza of the text.
It is astonishing to realize how these beautiful and fragile parchment pages of the medieval manuscript preserved colors as bright and gorgeous as the words of these Chanukah poems. The manuscripts and their content continue to resonate, enhance, and adorn our lives today, during the holidays, and beyond.
[i] Mahzor is a prayer book that contains liturgical texts as well as additional poems recited during the High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). This term is also frequently used for the prayer books for other Jewish festivals.
Photo of Cwi Rozenwajn with a group of partisans from Bendin, page 169 of Churban Czenstochow: The destruction of Czenstokov
"There is no single list of victims and survivors of Nazi persecution. Instead, researching an individual's story during the Holocaust is a process of following trails and piecing together bits of information." —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
There are many personal and practical reasons for undertaking genealogical research in connection with the Holocaust. Survivors, emigrants, and their descendants seek information on their families. People who sheltered their neighbors from the Nazis search for information about these neighbors, and vice versa. Individuals look for documentation to support claims for reparations or stolen property. Countless others—biographers, historians, novelists, and translators, to name a few—conduct genealogical research on individuals and communities in the Holocaust.
Families of Moshe Rubin and Shmaryahu Margolis, killed in the Holocaust. Kehilat Svislots
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the task of doing genealogy research, especially in connection with historical traumas. If you are new to genealogy, start with the research guide Genealogy: Getting Started (New York Public Library), which outlines basic steps and practical advice on where to find records and other information. The Library also offers an array of free online genealogy classes, including Getting Started with Jewish Genealogy Research at NYPL on April 7. These resources will help you develop research skills, including learning where to search for particular types of information, and how to collect and organize it.
Map of the town Rawa Ruska, from Sefer zikaron li-kehilat Ravah Ruskah veha-sevivah
The more information you have, the more you can narrow your search, but there are also many avenues for broad searches. Ancestry.com now has more than 200 Holocaust-related collections available on its free website (also available with your NYPL Library card on Ancestry Library Edition). Other large collections include the Arolsen Archives International Center on Nazi Persecution; Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All of these organizations have searchable databases on their site, as well as many other sources.
Do you know where your research subjects lived around the time of World War II? If you are researching Jewish individuals, and you know where they were living, you could start with geographically-specific resources, such as yizkor (Holocaust memorial) books of Jewish communities. First, check JewishGen’s bibliographic database to find out if there is a yizkor book for their town or city. Many yizkor books have been digitized by NYPL and the Yiddish Book Center, and are now keyword-searchable on the Yiddish Book Center’s website (Hebrew alphabet search) and on GenealogyIndexer.org (Hebrew, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabet search). Yizkor books are also increasingly available in English translation on JewishGen. For those yizkor books that are not translated, ask NYPL’s staff for help to search the index and/or table of contents; JewishGen also has a combined necrology (death list) database for the yizkor books on their site.
Sewing school, from Saloniki, ir va-em be-Yisrael
You can also search for information about individuals in a specific town or city in Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. Search by town name to see a list of residents. Each entry links to a page of witness testimony. You can also search by a person’s name and find where they were living. JewishGen also has many databases where you can search by country, or more broadly, by a person’s name, as does the comprehensive genealogy site SephardicGen. Another helpful geographic source is the Wiener Library’s list of genealogy records and resources arranged by country. For a more detailed list, please see the online guide.
Offline Sources
It’s important to note that not all records are online. It’s sometimes tempting to give up searching, or to conclude that there is no information available, if you don’t immediately get results from a quick database search. Don’t give up! Remember that these collections are vast, not standardized, and not always easily discoverable online. Reach out to NYPL for help navigating your research—contact us at dorotjewish@nypl.org
Pictured: "[The grave of Hinde Kharlofsky-Shternberg (of blessed memory), a victim of the Nazis, who died and was buried in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Near the grave stands her friend, Regina Kshepitsky-Yakubovitsh". Sefer zikaron li-kehilat Veyelun, p. 386.
Personal Perspectives
Sometimes it is difficult to find anything beyond the barest details (if that) of a person’s life, let alone a meaningful biography. One way to counter these absences is to seek out narratives of survivors—if not one’s own relatives, then people from a similar region or generation. Oral histories and testimonies are increasingly available online. These personal stories can illuminate the context of a larger community and bring us closer to the past. By hearing and reading them, we can learn more about history and honor survivors by bearing witness.
In honor of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) Pride Month in June, the Dorot Jewish Division recognizes the achievements of LGBT Jews in history and in the Library’s collection. Here are some key moments and figures.
Jewish Pioneers in LGBT Rights
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a German Jewish doctor and author who fought to decriminalize homosexuality in Germany.
Harvey Milk was a pioneering leader and one of the the first openly gay people elected to public office, and was assassinated a year after taking office.
Edie Windsor successfully sued the U.S. government for recognition of her Canadian marriage to her late wife, Thea Spyer, ultimately overturning the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) with her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
Activist and author Joan Nestle co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the world's largest collection of materials by and about Lesbians. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID: 1661019
Carol Conaway writes and researches on African American women's intellectual traditions.
Scholar and author Martin Duberman’s archives are held at NYPL, which also has a research fellowship in his name for LGBT Studies. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID: 1661034
In this episode, Lyudmila Sholokhova, Curator of the NYPL's Dorot Jewish Division, was joined by Jonathan Schorsch, professor of Jewish religious and intellectual history at the University of Potsdam. They discussed Schorsch's new publication, The Remarkable Life of Luis Moses Gomez, which explores one of New York's most prominent Sephardic Jewish merchant families from the 18th century—a family both extraordinary and paradigmatic of its milieu—by means of a bibliographic investigation of the NYPL's collections.
New York City in 1695 and Sketch and Site of the Old Mill Street Synagogue, from The Jewish Encyclopedia, A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Work/Cited is a program series that showcases the latest scholarship supported by the rich collections of The New York Public Library with a behind-the-scenes look at how the finished product was inspired, researched, and created. During our summer hiatus, catch up on our episodes on the NYPL blog, where videos and links to related resources are posted shortly afterward. Sign up for NYPL's Research Newsletter to hear about future programs as they are announced, starting with our upcoming season's kick-off in September.
The United States celebrates Labor Day this coming Monday, September 6. Some localities have held Labor Day marches in September since the 1870s, and it became a federal holiday following an act of Congress in 1894. Since its inception, the holiday has had a presence in the once-voluminous United States labor press. From invitations to parades and events to exhortations to abandon the holiday in favor of International Workers' Day on May 1, perspectives on Labor Day are as numerous as the publications themselves.
The New York Public Library subscribes to current labor periodicals in print and preserves a rich collection of historical periodicals on microfilm. But our online databases, many of which are accessible from home with your library card, also contain a wealth of historical publications. These publications are usually searchable, unlike microfilm and print, making them useful for researchers interested in a specific topic such as Labor Day.
The HathiTrust Digital Library provides access to digitized books and periodicals from the collections of research libraries across the country, including the New York Public Library. An underappreciated feature of HathiTrust is that its items, like the items in a research library’s catalog, are tagged with Library of Congress Subject Headings. In Advanced Catalog Search, researchers can search by subjects like “Labor Unions -- United States -- Periodicals” and select the option “full view” to view the full text of various papers.
One important periodical categorized under “Clothing Workers -- Labor Unions -- United States -- Periodicals” is the Ladies’ Garment Worker, the organ of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Published in both English and Yiddish, the Ladies’ Garment Worker took the occasion of Labor Day—or “Leybor Dei,” as it appeared in the Yiddish edition—1912 to educate its readership on the achievements of a major cloakmakers’ strike that had ended two years earlier, “lest the events of 1910 should be forgotten by some, or selfishly perverted by others.”
Chronicling America is another free resource offering access to American newspapers held by the Library of Congress. In addition to a robust search feature that allows users to filter results by state, date, language, newspaper title, and even ethnicity, the site includes a “topics” page to highlight primary sources related to subjects in American History, including Labor Day.
Chronicling America is especially valuable for researchers interested in the U.S. foreign-language press. One such newspaper is Radnička Borba, or Worker’s Struggle, the organ of the South Slavic Federation of the Socialist Party of America. Chronicling America has issues of the paper from the 1940s, when it was published in Cleveland, Ohio. The paper’s coverage of Labor Day 1941 appeared in its regular column “Throughout Capitalist America” and took a distinctly sarcastic tone, making liberal use of quotation marks to indicate the paper’s skepticism about the holiday’s celebration of U.S. workers’ "gains" and improved working conditions.
This database contains a handful of digitized trade journals related to specific trades or industries, as well as regional labor movement publications like Zanesville, Ohio’s Labor Journal. Like other databases from ProQuest, this one allows researchers to limit their search not only by date and publication but also by type of material (for example, advertisement or Image/Photograph). Shown here is a photograph of members of the local Typographical Union No. 199 in the 1904 labor day parade, holding a banner urging onlookers to buy union-printed goods. The accompanying article praises the union men’s "neat and manly appearance."
This database, also from ProQuest, aggregates 145 left-wing historical newspapers and magazines from the U.S. and U.K. Once logged into the database, click on “Publications” to go straight to a specific periodical. Shown here is a 1910 cartoon in the Industrial Worker, the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World, criticizing the American Federation of Labor’s practice of having police, or "the boss’ uniformed clubbers," lead Spokane’s annual "Labor (?) Day" parade and noting that police had this year been excluded from the parade due to the "efforts of a few militant members of the Cooks and Waiters."
The Library’s databases are a great place to start your research, but they represent only a fraction of our holdings. To get started on researching labor unions at NYPL, whether here at the Library or at home with your library card, check out our new research guide on the topic. The guide will help you navigate the Library’s catalog to identify periodicals, books, and more related to trade unionism in the United State.
Perhaps there is no more distinctive community in the land of Israel than the Jews from Ethiopia who have a rich and unique history, culture, and holiday. That holiday is Sigd, a pilgrimage holiday that falls every year on the 29th day of the 8th lunar month—that is, 50 days after Yom Kippur in the Hebrew calendar. In 2021, it will begin the evening of November 3 and conclude on the 4th; in 2022 it will begin the evening of November 22 and conclude on the 23rd. Resources available at the New York Public Library help to clarify the complex nature of this holiday.
Descending the mountain after prayers during Sigd celebration, Ambober, Ethiopia, 1956. Photographer: Yehuda Sivan, Jerusalem. In: The Jews of Ethiopia: A People in Transition, Natalia Berger, et al. (Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora; New York: The Jewish Museum, 1986), p. 70.
According to tradition, Sigd can be traced to Ethiopian Christian monks of the mid-15th century who joined the Ethiopian Jews, who were known in Ethiopia as Beta Israel or, historically, as Falashas (a term today considered derogatory). These monks helped to develop the music and prayers of the Beta Israel liturgy. Though absent from Ethiopian Judaism today, monks were integral to Beta Israel and played a major role in shaping it. One possibility is that Sigd originated as a send-off for the monks as they embarked on a retreat. Over the centuries, Sigd gained many layers of meaning. These include: “a reminder of the Prophet Ezra’s injunctions against intermarriage during the Babylonian Exile of the people of Israel (Ezra 9-10),” and “the important thing for the people is (to read) the Ten Commandments;” Sigd also marks the approach of the most important new moon of the year. Surprisingly, Sigd was also important to Ethiopian Christians who would ask Jewish clergy to pray for them during the holiday.
Also written “Seged,” Sigd is Amharic for bowing down or prostration, as penitence is a major feature of the celebration. The name draws on the Ge’ez root s g d. Amharic, a Semitic language, serves as the lingua franca of Ethiopia; Ge'ez, also a Semitic language, serves as the liturgical language of Ethiopia, including Beta Israel and Christians. To celebrate Sigd in Ethiopia, Beta Israel would prepare themselves by refraining from sexual intercourse for seven days, and avoiding bodily contact with non-Beta Israel. In this state of ritual purity, on the morning of Sigd the faithful would wear “clean clothes, preferably white, with colored fringes'' and, bearing a stone, climb a ritually pure mountain top—one that only Beta Israel had ascended—outside the most ritually significant village in the area. The mountain would be compared with Mount Sinai.
Women carrying stones on their heads to where Sigd is celebrated. Ambober, Ethiopia, 1984. Photographer: Joan Roth, New York. In: The Jews of Ethiopia: A People in Transition, Natalia Berger, et al. (Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora; New York: The Jewish Museum, 1986), pp. 68-69.
The community survived numerous further challenges including, with regard to Sigd, occasional prohibitions by the Communist regime that ruled from 1974–1991. It was during this time that large numbers of Beta Israel began emigrating from Ethiopia; most left on an often dangerous and difficult journey to Israel, where currently the population numbers over 150,000. Few Beta Israel still live in Ethiopia. In recognition of this historic community and its traditions, Israel has observed Sigd as an Israeli national holiday since 2008.
Since 1975, Beta Israel have been recognized as Jews eligible for immigration under Israel’s Law of Return. Beta Israel’s traditions are, at the same time, deeply intertwined with those of other Ethiopians, specifically those of the Ethiopian Church and of the "Pagan-Hebraic" Qemant. Beta Israel’s history is distinct enough from Judaism as practiced elsewhere that leading scholars have argued that the term “Beta Israel” should only be applied to the community when it was in Ethiopia, especially before the widespread adoption of mainstream Jewish norms in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term "Jews” which, historically, had a broader meaning in Ethiopia, should properly refer to the community after adoption of these norms, and particularly after the community’s arrival in Israel.
The basis for such a distinction has significant scholarly acceptance. “Beta Israel” and “Ethiopian Jews” continue, nevertheless, to be used as essentially equivalent terms. Popular accounts of Beta Israel prefer, moreover, to understand its practices, including Sigd, as directly descended from pre-Rabbinic Jewish sources. This idea finds resonance among some Ethiopian Jews today, and agrees with traditional Beta Israel perspectives. Drawing on the Kebra Nagast, the 14th century Ethiopian national epic, Beta Israel traced its origins to Menelik, son of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. The epic thus situates the origins of Beta Israel—and of the Christian dynasty that ruled Ethiopia from the 13th century to 1974—in the 10th century BCE.
Sherover Promenade, Jerusalem (photo taken between 1990 and 2000).
Photographer: Zvi Tiberiu Keller. Creative Commons license.
The purposes and significance of Sigd have been understood in a variety of ways as circumstances have changed. Perhaps the most dramatic transformations have been inspired by the departure of most Beta Israel from Ethiopia. Celebration in Israel began in 1980. A variety of objections from both within and without the Ethiopian Jewish community had put off celebration of Sigd before then: some argued it was not Jewish; others argued that it was a festival of "exile” and was therefore not meaningful once Ethiopian Jews were in Israel; still others asserted that, as a mark of difference, it was not helpful to the assimilation process.
The first celebration was still hampered by these ongoing concerns and the practical complexities of re-envisioning the holiday in a new setting. By 1982, however, a more successful version of Sigd had been worked out. Today the penitential portion of the ritual takes place at the Western Wall and celebration takes place along the Haas and Sherover Promenades, which provide impressive views over the Old City of Jerusalem. These locations underline Sigd’s new, civic prominence and significance as a “festival of exile and redemption.”
The New York Public Library offers many resources on Sigd, and on the fascinating history of Ethiopian Jewry. A few suggestions may be found below. You are welcome to consult our reference staff at dorotjewish@nypl.org for further assistance with any research questions.
Resources on Sigd and Related Topics Available at NYPL or Online
On the Sigd / Seged Pilgrimage Festival:
Abbink, J[on]. “Seged Celebration in Ethiopia and Israel: Continuity and Change of a Falasha Religious Holiday.” Anthropos, vol. 78: 5/6 (1983): 789-810. Available through the NYPL via JSTOR.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Seged: A Falasha Pilgrimage Festival,” Musica Judaica, Vol. 3, No. 1 (5741/1980-81): 42-62. Available through the NYPL via JSTOR.
Berger, Natalia, curator; Kay Kaufman Shelemay, guest curator. The Jews of Ethiopia: A People in Transition. Exhibition catalog. Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora; New York: The Jewish Museum, 1986.
Dege-Müller, Sophia. “Between Heretics and Jews: Inventing Jewish Identities in Ethiopia.” Entangled Religions, vol. 6 (2018): Historical Engagements and Interreligious Encounters - Jews and Christians in Premodern and Early Modern Asia and Africa. Online, open-access journal.
Jews East, a European Research Council project at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Subproject Horn of Africa: The Horn of Africa - from Ethiopia to the Red Sea. Responsible Team Members: Sophia Dege-Müller, Verena Krebs, Bar Kribus.
Kaplan, Steven. “Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia.” Video of a lecture presented on 30 November 2020 as part of the Institute of Advanced Studies’ Ethiopian Studies Series.
Kaplan, Steven, and Chaim Rosen. “Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel: Between Preservation of Culture and Invention of Tradition.” Jewish Journal of Sociology, 35:1 (June, 1993): 35-48. Available through the NYPL via JSTOR.
This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.
Photo by Kurt Hoffman
Chana Pollack has been the Forward's archivist for the past two decades, providing research, translation, and production of original Forward archival content with an eye on the contemporary context. The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism, featuring outstanding reporting on cultural, social, and political issues with English and Yiddish platforms, building on a century-old legacy maintained in our archives leading to a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. The Forward's archival photos and recent exhibition PRESSED are part of an ongoing digital mapping project with Urban Archive. Chana recently published this essay on archival silences in the Forward archives. Forward archival content, translated from the Yiddish original, is featured as part of the Forward's original podcast based on their historic advice column known as "The Bintl Brief." They were the archivist for A Living Lens, showcasing the Forward's photo collection and a featured translator in Have I Got A Story For You, presenting fiction from the Forward's past century. They were camera operator, editor, and producer for the Forward's video series Yiddish Writers Monologues, featuring interviews with several "last known" Yiddish writers. They recently helped actor David Duchovny recover his grandfather's Yiddish writing.
When did you first get the idea for your research project?
I was reading this essay by David Duchovny inThe Atlantic in 2021, and noticing his mention of his grandfather Moshe Duchovny. I read there that his grandfather, Yiddish writer Moshe Duchovny, was a staff writer for the Forverts, our historic Yiddish daily, and found the name to be unfamiliar, but I was able to find his obituary in our back issues, correct the historical record (he wrote for the Tog-Morgn Zhurnal), and the idea to conduct further research took off from there.
What brought you to the Library?
I have been researching in the Dorot Division for over two decades now and consider it my place of worship!
What research tools could you not live without?
I would be nothing without Yiddish literary lexicons and dictionaries, encyclopedias, and librarians. And not that you asked about this exactly, but as tech is so important these days and influences research too, I have to tell you that my iPhone is the handiest MacGyveriest tool. Working at a news media outlet, it's really critical that I be able to turn research around fairly quickly. So, I use it to photograph the microfilm screen and often find that a faster way to send back my findings. Also, it reduces the need to scan or order scans. Anything to cut through bureaucracy while maintaining archival integrity of the materials is handy, I find.
What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?
Dorothy Thompson's interview with Hitler.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?
I recently discovered the 1956 (Knopf) children's book by Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert, The Travels of Marco, in which a pigeon alights atop our historic neon Forverts sign and travels the Lower East Side neighborhood discovering the joys of a diverse NYC while delighting in our history. Finding that book forced me to do further research on the couple that created it and that led me to uncover Ronni Solbert's gorgeous world of illustrations. Also my spouse bought me the most amazing book for my 60th birthday a couple of weeks ago by Polish Nobel Prize winning novelist Olga Tokarczuk called The Lost Soul. I love art books and this one is formatted with delicate sketches on mylar in between gorgeous illustrations and poetic text. The message I took away from there is that you will likely always find yourself at home. And while I love to travel, if there's one thing we all had a chance to learn this past year or so is that home evokes things beyond the comfort of material possessions. Something like that. I think maybe we all aspire to make home more like a library in a way, as a place for the soul to rest safely while expanding.
Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.
While I knew that Moshe Duchovny had written for the "other" Yiddish daily, I had no idea what type of writer he was. Being able to sit and page through some of the microfilmed back issues of his publication Der Tog-Morgn-Zshurnal/The Day-Morning Journal of the 1950s and 60s, to not only read his pieces and to learn of his being an engaging interviewer and a sensitive reviewer, but to see this writing within the context of the daily news, advertisements, and cultural announcements there, helped recreate a sense of the writer and his time. His obituary listed him as having died suddenly, early in November 1960. Leafing through the back issues showed me his having died shortly after the paper reported on the infamous Eichmann Nazi war crimes trial, something I know to have been deeply captivating and also extremely stress-inducing for many in the community.
How do you maintain your research momentum?
I find it hardest when I have to pivot back to other queries or responsibilities, true, as I had to with the Duchovny item. I would really love to find his serialized novels, said to be published in the Yiddish press, so I am grateful that the Dorot librarians kindly offered me the option to put the microfilm on hold for a few weeks—super helpful. And I think you just have to have faith and keep reaching out to folks who might have known him or read him while he was a living breathing Yiddish writer of New York. Maybe he researched at NYPL too?
After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?
I frequently use social media to express what I've seen while down the rabbit hole of Yiddish journalism research, and to gauge other's reactions and experiences, and I am fortunate to have folks I work with, especially our Innovation Editor Talya Zax, interested in hearing about my findings, my failures, my insights, and imaginary wanderings. I'm married to a poet and Yiddish translator as well, so I am beyond lucky to be able to share the archival and research experience deeply with them too. I try to walk or ride a bike to and from NYPL to kind of get my mind back on the current era! And I try not to eat my way around town, but there are many great eats around 42nd St!
What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?
Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?
Be okay with going slowly and watching yourself get distracted. Pay attention to that off-ramp you just took. For instance, there are some gorgeous illustrated old Yiddish advertisements as well as fascinating classified ads that can really help offer context when researching articles that purport to be the MOST important thing. I started collecting lots of those old ads from our issues and found them so historically relevant and visually interesting, we just made an ebook of them to offer subscribers. Also, I cannot get enough of old obituary notices in the Yiddish press.
Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?
Be kind to the librarians. When I was a younger Fulbright researcher in Eastern Europe, I was actually advised to bring gifts to the research librarians there to help facilitate my searches! You bet I did it, and my budget afforded mostly lots of American chocolate bars to help grease the research engines but I really really was moved by how hard it seemed sometimes for them to be able to help researchers. One elderly film librarian marked out sections of archival film I wanted copied by delicately tying thread through the sprocket holes, something I'd normally seen done using a China marker. Times were hard there sure, but libraries everywhere often struggle financially for basics. I still feel that it's really important to show some love to these folks who work very hard for little financial compensation, to free up information for us all.
This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.
Sharon Aronofsky Weltman is the Director of Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University (LSU), the William E. “Bud” Davis Alumni Professor of English, and co-editor of Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film. She has published many articles and three books (most recently, Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical, the 2021 SCMLA Book Prize winner) on literature, musical theatre, and the first Jewish woman playwright in English. She loves to read, write, and dance. Weltman is a fellow of Fordham–NYPL Research Fellowship Program in Jewish Studies
When did you first get the idea for your research project?
I began working on Elizabeth Polack, the first Anglo-Jewish woman playwright, when I was asked to write an article on British women playwrights for The History of British Women’s Writing,1830-1880 (Palgrave, 2018). I decided to focus on five wildly different dramatists. One was the neglected Polack, best known for her melodrama Esther the Royal Jewess, or the Death of Haman! (1835), which was performed in a lively working-class commercial theater located in an East End London neighborhood with a large Jewish population. Set in ancient Persia, the play is usually read as what the nineteenth century dubbed an "Oriental" or "Exotic" melodrama. And so it is. But when I read it, I was thunderstruck: first performed one week before the holiday of Purim, it’s clearly also a Purimspiel—a raucous Jewish folk comedy traditionally performed for the holiday of Purim, which celebrates the biblical story of Queen Esther. It even ends with a scrim that descends at the end of the performance that reads "Purim"! Yet no one had considered what it meant for this play to have drawn a diverse community of Jews and non-Jews together into a commercial theatre to see a play that combines the genres of melodrama (the nineteenth century’s most popular theatrical form) and Purimspiel (a Jewish folk tradition). Further research revealed several plays with Jewish themes by Jewish authors in the 1830s and 40s playing during the Purim season in East End theaters for mixed audiences. I realized that I had a book project in hand.
What brought you to the Library?
Preliminary research led me to materials related to Elizabeth Polack and her contemporaries in various collections at the NYPL. I was very excited about the idea of visiting to examine them, and so I applied for a Fordham–NYPL short term fellowship in Jewish Studies.
What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?
The most unexpected item ever in my career is the content of the earliest play about Sweeney Todd, first written and performed in 1847 at the Britannia Theatre in London’s East End. I was examining the manuscript at the British Library, and I saw that it was in many ways a completely different play from the version that was eventually published in 1883. The big shocker was that the original melodrama is an abolitionist play. It was such a surprise that this story of a mad barber and his cannibal pie-making accomplice incorporated a plot crafted to fight slavery that I put together a scholarly edition published as a special issue of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. You can read about it here.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?
I just finished reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, a gift from my sister. I don’t know nearly as much about Elizabethan history as I do about Victorian England, so there was plenty to learn from this powerfully written novel. Although I’d remembered that Hamnet and Hamlet were variations of the same name, before this I hadn’t stopped to imagine Shakespeare’s loss of his young son or to dwell on how such tragedy must have impacted his writing of Hamlet—and so much more.
Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.
I’ve described how my project on Elizabeth Polack started as an outgrowth of an article on five Victorian women dramatists. But the unexpected turn was that I was at the time poised to complete my third book, Victorians on Broadway (University of Virginia Press, 2020). Instead, I started down a deep rabbit hole. I became very excited—okay, obsessed—with Polack. Even though I loved working on my Broadway book, I decided to pause for a bit to write an article on the way in which Polack’s blending of the genre of Purimspiel and melodrama helped promote Jewish emancipation in Britain while ushering the first Jewish woman playwright into the profession. But weaving together the strands of Jewish history, women’s history, and genre history with close analysis and interpretation of the play itself turned out to take a long time, delaying my Broadway book by two years—not part of the plan! But the result was worth it: my award-winning essay, “Melodrama, Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation” in Victorian Literature and Culture 47.2 (2019): 1-41, which took the 2020 Nineteenth Century Studies Association Best Article Prize. Victorians on Broadway came out a few months later (and it won a prize, too).
How do you maintain your research momentum?
I love research, so if it were uninterrupted by eating, teaching, and existence in general, the momentum would be easy. But it’s always hard to gear back up after any time away—especially after a thorny work or life problem has blown every thought about the project out of my head. Nevertheless, I know that once I get back in the zone, I’ll get lost in it again.
After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?
Dinner with the family or friends, exercise, TV, reading for fun—and sometimes, more work . . .
What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?
NYPL's website, of course! Louisiana State University and LSU’s email portal (also, of course), the Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film’s editorial manager, and the East Baton Rouge Parish Library website (to download a borrowed novel onto my Kindle). There are social media pages and shopping pages because, well, I’m a product of my times.
Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started?
Rabbit holes are fun. And they can lead to amazing finds. Let yourself follow them. But know the difference between pure procrastination and productive deep dives.
Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?
Research and writing are lonely tasks. To help overcome the isolation, form a writing group, or create some other kind of research community to share work or chat about progress. It’s crucial. Hardly anyone can keep going without encouragement and companionship. I couldn’t.
On December 16, 2021, Doc Chatters took a before-and-after virtual walking tour of the Lower East Side's historic synagogues.
Norfolk Street Synagogue, Lower East Side. New York, NY, circa 1940s. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5750836.
A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-One, Lyudmila Sholokhova, curator of the Dorot Jewish Division at NYPL, and Vladimir Levin, Director of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explored the photographs of Morris Huberland, a passionate photographer of New York City with particular interest in the Jewish Lower East Side. They analyzed Huberland's images as a source for studies of the complex and historical influences of synagogue architecture and discussed the photographer's role in documenting these institutions from their heyday to their decline in the 1960s and 1970s, when many were repurposed or demolished.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Forty-One: Primary Sources
Our speakers explored several photographs by Morris Huberland, including:
Rabbi Elias Huberland, 1950. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 56754864.
Beth HaKnesset Ansche Podhajce, 108 E. 1st Street, 1926. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5382190.
Church (formerly Forsyth Street Synagogue). Forsyth and Delancey Streets, Lower East Side. New York, 1971. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5382201.
Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, circa 1970. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5751121.
Interior of Beth Hamedrash Hagodol synagogue. Photo by Morris Huberland. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5382205.
Additional questions? Email photography@nypl.org to reach our knowledgeable reference team.
More Doc Chats in 2022!
Doc Chat has wrapped its Fall 2021 season. You can catch up on past episodes and explore helpful resources on the Doc Chat Channel of the NYPL blog. We'll kick off another lively and thought-provoking season in the the coming weeks. Make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter.
Celebrate Black History Month with life stories by African American Jewish authors. Explore these inspiring reads—by famous entertainers, a food writer, an activist, and more—held in the Library’s circulating and research collections.
In a memoir of identity and ethnicity, the author describes growing up with his Black activist father and his own white skin, the abandonment of his mother, and his life spent caught between two worlds.
In Black and Bulletproof, Marcus Hardie tells his journey from his dangerous childhood in the outskirts of Los Angeles to war-torn Israel. He explains the importance of faith in his life and how it led him to enlist in Israel's elite anti-terrorism unit the Sayeret Golani.
Describes the personal journey of a woman born to a Black mother and Jewish father, including her struggle with drugs and complicated friendships, and culminating in her endeavor to find her own identity.
This provocative collection of essays and observations on race, sex, identity, and the politics of style speaks to a young generation of Blacks who were raised in an integrated society and are now waiting for America to deliver on its promises of equality.
The writer speaks of the challenges that women meet when attempting to pursue goals once thought to be suitable only for males. She gives us a fresh perspective into the world of not just Black Jews but all Jews and the role religion plays in the politics of our community and our world. She also shares with us the struggle of African Americans to be seen as individuals within a larger group or within multiple groups and not just those dictated by race.
The debut memoir by Marra B. Gad, a mixed-race Jewish woman who chooses to help her racist, abusive, estranged Great-Aunt Nette after she develops Alzheimer’s, a disease that slowly erases Nette’s prejudices, allowing Marra to develop at last a relationship with the woman who shunned her in youth.
A young African American man describes growing up in an all-Black Brooklyn housing project, one of twelve children of a white mother and Black father, and discusses his mother's contributions to his life and coming to terms with his confusion over his own identity.
A culinary historian uses the story of his own ancestors, both Black and white, to trace the origin of barbecue, soul food, and Southern cuisine, revealing the power of food to bring people together.
Ten years ago Ahuva Gray entered her community in Bayit Vegan—and the Jewish people—as a stranger. Today this African American convert to Judaism is a beloved speaker, respected and admired in Jewish communities throughout the globe, traveling worldwide to inspire her fellow Jews to appreciate their heritage and to tap into the power and meaning of Jewish prayer.
The loving yet brutally honest memoir of the daughter of comedy legend Richard Pryor. Rain Pryor was born in the idealistic, free-love 1960s. Her mother was a Jewish go-go dancer who wanted a tribe of rainbow children, and her father was perhaps the most compelling and brilliant comedian of his era.
The comedian and actress presents autobiographical essays that reflect on her disadvantaged youth as a foster child in South Central Los Angeles; her discovery of her talent for comedy; and her struggles with gender, race, and class boundaries in the entertainment industry.
The popular rock musician reflects on his life, from his struggles at school and tensions at home to his three-decade career as a songwriter, producer, and performer.
The former nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights discusses, for the first time, how President Clinton abandoned his ambitious civil rights agenda when the political right attacked her nomination, and how the civil rights movement has subsequently suffered.
Tells the story of filmmaker Lacey Schwartz who grew up in a middle-class Jewish family, but at eighteen discovers she is the product of an affair her mother had with an African American man.
In a world where it was commonplace to see signs that read "whites only" or "Jews not allowed," William Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine, the eldest son of a Jewish father and a Protestant Irish mother. Janet Langhart, an African American, was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana by her single-parent mother, a Southern Baptist. These two people, from different regions, races, and religions, are both witnesses to and targets of the social tensions of the day. Opposites in so many ways—in color, faith, and culture—seemingly a bundle of contradictions, they meet in 1974, become friends, and eventually marry in 1996, in the U.S. Capitol
The author chronicles his earliest encounters with faith in the figure of his father, a Black Methodist minister, his earliest recollections of the lure of Judaism, the South before the Civil Rights movement, and his conversion to Judaism
The daughter of Oliver Golden, an African American expatriate and agrarian activist of the early 1900's, and Bertha Bialek, youngest daughter of Polish American emigres of Jewish descent, Lily Golden has a special place in history. In this account of her experience, Golden provides a connection between the contemporary and historical relationships of America to Russia. Golden offers a distinctly different and refreshing point of view of the lives and experiences of Russia in her often alluring and romantic, sometimes bitterly painful, yet always vivid and intimate details of her life as a dark-skinned Russian surviving in and struggling against turbulent changes.
Describes his career, affairs, his marriage to Swedish actress May Britt, his conversion to Judaism, his relationships with the Kennedys and Richard Nixon, and his drug and alcohol problems.
Yelena Khanga tells the compelling story of growing up Black in Russia and journeying through cultures to learn about her forebears and meet relatives she had never known.
African American and Orthodox Jewish blogger MaNishtana’s "not-autobiography” Thoughts from a Unicorn is a witty, straight-talking collection of memoirs, essays, and a few haikus that will take you on a journey of laughs, tears, self-reflection, learning, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.
The author, the son of a Jewish mother and an African American father, recounts his experiences with racism, leftist parents, a name change, military service, and a career as a professor of American literature.
Uncommon Rhythm is a harrowing yet moving account of Aaron's personal journey through social isolation and discrimination to found one of the nation's cultural jewels, the Sphinx Organization.
Born Black and Jewish and immediately adopted, Steven Charles Pickman is a high-energy comedian, a piano virtuoso since the age of 5, and an excellent singer. Despite all of these advantages, he eventually became homeless and addicted. Now clean and sober, he has dedicated his life to helping others suffering from the same.
Adams retells his story of growing up in Harlem and being exposed to the Black Power movement during his time as a student at New York University before being invited to attend a classmate's synagogue leading to his eventual conversion to Judaism.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.
