JHE primarily deals with Jewish built heritage — but also with the variety of issues linked to and concerning it, from museums and exhibits to tourism.
Today, we celebrate Jewish Archives, Libraries, and Archival Collections — and highlight three projects that have recently been launched or publicized.
YERUSHA – The European Jewish Archives Portal
Like Jewish Heritage Europe, Yerusha is a project of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (RFHE) — and its new web site was launched at the end of June.
Yerusha means “inheritance” in Hebrew, and the project is an online platform that unites Jewish archival heritage held in hundreds of archives, libraries and museums across Europe — to date, in some 350 institutions in 24 countries. It features thousands of in-depth archival descriptions giving researchers access to a wealth of records covering all major subjects of Jewish history.
A collaborative effort of European, US and Israeli academic and heritage institutions, including Jewish museums and libraries, state archives, higher education departments and research centres, Yerusha forms a central platform providing detailed information on centuries of European Jewish archival heritage.
Click here for the Yerusha web site
HIDDEN TREASURES: Celebrating Jewish Archives in Britain
A project of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the web site features archives that are part of a national network of state, local and communal archives with Jewish holdings.
It has links to an expanding national archive network that covers collections ranging from local history to refugee records that can be searched by theme or browsed by institution or collection.
It also displays an expanding online exhibition of “Treasures” — individual rare images, photographs, documents and artefacts relating to centuries of Jewish life in Britain.
The project encourages private and other archives to join — and also encourages individuals to contribute to the Board of Deputies’ online COVID-19 archive, showing how the pandemic is affecting Jews and Jewish life in Britain.
Click here to access the web site
I-TAL-YA BOOKS: Jewish Books in Italy Catalogue
Officially announced at the end of June, this is a collaborative effort to identify and catalogue every Hebrew book in Italy. It is being carried out by the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy (UCEI), the Rome National Central Library (BNCR), and the National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem, with the support of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
The aim is to create, for the first time, an integrated and standardized listing of the thousands of uncatalogued rare Hebrew books dating back hundreds of years that are held among collections belonging to local Jewish communities, as well as libraries owned by the state, the Italian Church Institutions (CEI) and the Vatican. The initiative uses technology developed specifically for the project.
The UCEI is overseeing the project, with the BNCR hosting the catalogue, and the NLI providing the relevant training, support and expertise related to Hebrew books.
Following an initial pilot phase that has concluded, the full-scale project will include an estimated 35,000 volumes from 14 Jewish communities and 25 state institutions and will take approximately three years to complete.
Click to see more about the project