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Author: JDC Archives

JDC Receives Prestigious Award

JDC Receives Prestigious Award

  Each year the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) awards one or more grants to further the cause of Jewish family history research. The award honors Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern (19151994) who is widely considered to be the dean of contemporary Jewish genealogy. JDC was one of two recipients of this year’s grant. The award has been given in order to grow the JDC Archives Names Index of individuals who have received life-saving aid from the organization. The database currently contains over 600,000 names linking to historical documents; the grant will enable the archives to make more...

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As Jews Today Celebrate the Siyum HaShas, Remembering the Publication of the “JDC Talmud”

As Jews Today Celebrate the Siyum HaShas, Remembering the Publication of the “JDC Talmud”

  For those who’ve partaken in the custom of reading one page of the oral law every day for seven and a half years, August 1, 2012 marks the completion of the reading of the entire Babylonion Talmud. The compendium of Oral Jewish law is being celebrated today, with tens of thousands of Jews worldwide celebrating the 2,711 pages of commentary and legal writing that govern the traditional Jewish lifestyle. During the reign of the Nazis, the continuity of Jewish scholarship was threatened with volumes of the Talmud, liturgical books and publications Jewish in content and authorship being ransacked...

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Early Soviet Jewish Life Captured on Film

Early Soviet Jewish Life Captured on Film

Rare film clips of 1920’s and 1930’s Jewish life in the Soviet Union can now be seen as part of the JDC Archives web exhibit: Beyond Relief: JDC’s Work in the Ukraine and Crimea between the Wars. Scenes of JDC’s innovative Agro-Joint programs are excerpted from two silent films, “Agro-Joint” and “Founding a New Life” (released respectively in 1936 and 1938). Released at the time when JDC first began to use motion pictures to inform the public of their work abroad, the films are a fascinating glimpse of the people, locales, and cooperative work methods involved in Agro-Joint agricultural...

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JDC Announces First Archives Fellows

JDC Announces First Archives Fellows

Two historians named inaugural recipients of the Fred and Ellen Lewis JDC Archives Fellowship Michael Geller / JDC Telephone: (212) 885-0838 Email: michael.geller@jdcny.org For Immediate Release The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) announced today that historians Mary Fraser Kirsh and Susan Gilson Miller were named the first Fred and Ellen Lewis JDC Archives Fellows. Designed for scholars engaged in graduate level, post-doctoral, or independent study, the Fellowship is for research in the JDC Archives facilities in New York or Jerusalem. We are thrilled to have such esteemed scholars as Drs. Kirsh and Miller become our first JDC Archives...

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Award-winning author features JDC Archives

Award-winning author features JDC Archives

  Leslie Maitland, former New York Times reporter and author of a new and much-lauded memoir about her mother, has written a beautiful blog post for the Jewish Book Council about JDC and the debt she owes to the organization for saving her family during World War II. It was only by conducting research for her recent book in the JDC Archives that Maitland realized the full extent of the agencys life-saving role in her mothers life. By scrutinizing internal organizational memos, the journalist learned for the first time of the significant aid JDC provided when her family left...

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