Testaments to the Holocaust. Documents and Rare Printed Materials from the Wiener Library, London

The UCSC Library has just acquired access to Testaments to the Holocaust.  While not the largest or most extensive collection in its field, The Wiener Library's archive is the oldest, holding unique materials documenting the rise of Germany's Nazi Party.

Testaments to the Holocaust is the online publication of the archives of the Wiener Library, London, the first archive to collect evidence of the Holocaust and the anti-semitic activities of the German Nazi Party. It contains documentary evidence collected in several different programmes: the eyewitness accounts which were collected before, during and after the Second World War, from people fleeing the Nazi oppression, a large collection of photographs of pre-war Jewish life, the activities of the Nazis, and the ghettoes and camps, a collection of postcards of synagogues in Germany and eastern Europe, most since destroyed, a unique collection of Nazi propaganda publications including a large collection of ‘educational’ children’s’ books, and the card index of biographical details of prominent figures in Nazi Germany, many with portrait photographs. Pamphlets, bulletins and journals published by the Wiener Library to record and disseminate the research of the Institute are also included. 75% of the content is written in German.

Date Range: 1889-1965

Content: 100,764 images

Source Library:The Wiener Library, London

Jewish Boys Let's Go Fight

The exhibition Jewish Boys Let’s Go Fight is currently on view at Warsaw Castle Square and can also be viewed online:

"The Bund, together with other Jewish organizations and parties, played a great role in creating The Jewish Combat Organization. Marek Edelman became a symbol of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but his origin organization, The Bund, seems to be almost forgotten. As the history of The Bund is inextricably connected with the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the 70th anniversary of the Uprising makes a good opportunity to present the story of Marek Edelman’s roots."

Source: Yiddish Sources

Oqimta: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature

Oqimta is a digitized research journal devoted to all spheres and types of talmudic and rabbinical literature – in Jewish law and exegesis.  The articles in this journal undergo academic appraisal and redaction, and are published in the accepted languages in research. Oqimta will be appearing once a year, in digitized form, and is available free of charge to the reading public.

We are pleased to present the inaugural issue: Issue 1 (5773/2013) containing twelve articles.

Leviathan: Celebrating 40 Years of Jewish Journalism at UCSC

3 - 4:30 p.m., Sunday, April 28
Fireside Lounge, Stevenson College
Center for Jewish Studies
University of California, Santa Cruz

Please join former and current staff members of Leviathan in a celebration of the student publication’s 40th anniversary.Leviathan is one of the longest-running university student publications devoted to Jewish themes in the United States. Over the years, its articles and artwork have explored contemporary questions of Jewish identity, the role of Israel, local Jewish issues, and a wide range of cultural and historical topics. Many of it editors, writers, and artists have gone on to distinguished careers in publishing, journalism, education, and other fields.

The event, to be held in the Fireside Lounge of Stevenson College at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 28, will include a panel discussion with former and current Leviathan staff members, the official launch of the newly created digital archive of past issues of the publication going back to the 1970s, and a festive reception with food and beverages.

Co-sponsored by Leviathan, the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Stevenson College. Administrative support provided by the Institute for Humanities Research.

Ari Kelman: “Learning to be Jewish”

Helen Diller Family Endowment Lecture 
Center for Jewish Studies
210 Humanities 1
University of California, Santa Cruz

May 8, 201, 4:00-5:30 pm

For most Americans, the phrase “Jewish education” summons images of Hebrew School. But, Hebrew School, or even what we might call “formal Jewish education” amounts to only a very small percentage of where and how people learn to be Jewish. The landscape of Jewish learning might include those sites, but it certainly includes a much broader spectrum of settings like worship, film festivals, popular music, literature, home-based rituals (like Passover seders), technology, and encounters with the news. By focusing on the places where and how people learn to be Jewish, a dramatically different image of Jewish education comes into focus. Building on cutting edge research into educational cultures, we will explore the variety of ways in which people learn to be Jewish in the 21st century and ask how this new understanding might inform how we understand what it means to be Jewish.

An alumnus of UC Santa Cruz (Stevenson, 1994) Ari Y. Kelman is the inaugural Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies in the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where he also serves as an affiliate of the Jewish Studies Program, the Center for Comparative Race and Ethnicity, the American Studies Program, and, by courtesy, a professor of Religious Studies. He is the author of Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio, (University of California Press, 2009) and the editor of a volume of the work of cartoonist Milt Gross (NYU Press, 2009). He is also the co-author of Sacred Strategies (Alban Institute Press, 2010), a study of synagogue transformation efforts in the United States and winner of the 2010 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Jewish Education and Identity. In collaboration with Steven M. Cohen, Ari has authored a number of studies of contemporary American Jewish culture addressing issues from Israel to the internet. Ari recently finished a book entitled Shout to the Lord: Worship and Music in Evangelical America, and is currently writing about Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish Catalog, Jewish cultural festivals and other extra-scholastic loci in which people learn to be Jewish.

David Myers: “A Hasidic Town in New York? As American as Apple Pie?”

David Myers is professor of Jewish history and chair of the UCLA History Department. He is currently at work with Nomi Stolzenberg (USC) on a book on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York. This project represents a significant departure from his work in the fields of German-Jewish intellectual history, the history of Jewish historiography, and the history of Zionism. In his current work, he is combining historical, ethnographic, and legal approaches to examine the rise to prominence of a self-contained and legally recognized municipality in the State of New York that consists entirely of Hasidic Jews. His research shows that the creation of such a homogeneous shtetl has had few parallels in Jewish history, though it is not nearly so unusual in American history, which has an identifiable tradition of permitting strong forms of religious sub-communities to take root.

Monday, February 25, 2013, 5:00-6:45 PM
Humanities Building 1, Room 210

UC Santa Cruz