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November 10, 2004
Dear Board Member:
The Jewish Archival Survey in the Former Soviet Union
The former Soviet archives are the "Cairo Geniza" of modern Jewish
history – a treasure trove which was locked away and inaccessible
for three quarters of a century. The Jewish Archival Survey
in the former Soviet Union is, therefore, of monumental importance
for Jewish scholarship and historical consciousness. It will expand
and revise our understanding of the European Jewish experience
by making accessible to scholars and researchers the millions
of pages of archival materials relating to Jewish history which
were once secreted in Soviet archives.
It is for this reason that the Memorial Foundation for Jewish
Culture has supported the Jewish Archival Survey in the
former Soviet Union, a major research initiative of the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America and Russian State University for
the Humanities in Moscow, from its inception in the early 1990’s
until today.
In January, 2005, the Jewish Archival Survey will publish
Jewish Documentary Sources in the Trophy Collections
of the‘Special Archive. This volume will provide a detailed description
of Jewish materials in the Special Archive, an extraordinary treasure
trove of archival collections from all across Europe which were
stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and seized by the Soviet
army at the end of the war.
The Special Archive, whose very existence was a secret until the
fall of the Soviet Union, contains ninety-four archival collections
of Jewish organizations and communities from Paris, Berlin, Vienna,
Amsterdam, Belgrade, Salonika, and elsewhere. It includes the
records of the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish National Fund,
the German Jewish Central-Verein, HIAS-HICEM, the Paris office
of the Joint Distribution Committee and other major Jewish organizations.
Because of the special interest in this material among scholars
in the West, an English language edition of this guide is also
planned.
A guide to Jewish archival collections in Kiev, with descriptions
of more than 800 collections, is now in the editorial stage, and
is slated for publication in late 2005.
The reaction of the scholarly community to the guides and the
ongoing survey activities has been one of universal praise and
encouragement. Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, the foremost authority
on Soviet archives, has described the database and guides as the
“most extensive” resource in this field, and has commended the
Jewish Archival Survey for “opening information access
to many previously suppressed materials relating to Jews and Jewish
affairs.”
Work is now underway to accumulate descriptions of collections
in the archives of St. Petersburg, the Russian provinces, and
the Ukraine. The Survey’s staff in Moscow maintains contact with
all participating repositories, provides methodological guidance,
and reviews and corrects all submissions. An on-site supervisor
is responsible for survey activity in St. Petersburg and Ukraine.
Work in the Ukraine promises to be most challenging, but also
most rewarding. This vast territory has been the center of intensive
Jewish communal life for the last 500 years. The Jewish Archival
Survey has accumulated 2,000 descriptions of collections
from the Ukraine, and based on our activity to date, we estimate
that there are 10,000 such collections in the country. We anticipate
the publication of five volumes of archival guides covering different
regions of Ukraine.
The Survey makes these archival materials accessible
by providing comprehensive descriptions of all archival collections
on Jewish history and culture in the former Soviet Union in a
series of easily usable guides. The guides describe each collection
individually, in volumes which cover a city or region. Each volume
includes indices of names and places, thereby enabling scholars
to review all the archival collections related to an individual
(e.g., Vladimir Jabotinsky, Sholem Aleichem), a place (e.g., Minsk)
or an institution (Poale Zion, the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre)
in the given city or region.
The Jewish Archival Survey has published two major guides
to date: Jewish Documentary Sources in Moscow Archives: A
Guide (Russian, 1997), which lists and describes more than
550 collections held in the capital city of the Soviet Union,
and Jewish Documentary Sources in Belarusian Archives (Russian,
2003), which provides descriptions of more than 1,000 collections
in Belarus (including Minsk, Gomel, Grodna, and other cities),
a region where Jews have lived since the 14th century.
Project Judaica
The Jewish Archival Survey is conducted by Project Judaica, the
first university-based Jewish studies program established in Russia
after the fall of the Soviet Union. The program, co-sponsored,
as I indicated earlier, by the Jewish Theological Seminary and
the Russian State University for Humanities also offers a five-year
program of instruction in Jewish studies, leading to a degree
from the Russian State University for Humanities and a certificate
from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Courses are taught by a combination of local and non-Russian professors
of Judaica, including faculty from the Jewish Theological Seminary
and other institutions of higher learning. The Foundation also
supported the academic program since its inception. You may recollect
that we visited the Russian State University when our Executive
Committee met in Moscow on July 2-4, 2001.
Since its establishment in 1991, seventy-four students have completed
the rigorous five-year course of study. More than twenty-five
of them have gone on to assume positions in Jewish scholarship,
education, and communal life. These include Artur Klempert, instructor
of Jewish history and Museum Director at the Lipman Day School;
Matvei Chlenov, Director of the Moscow office of the World Congress
of Russian Jews; Anya Sorokina, Director of the Moscow Yiddish
Center; and Masha Kaspina, Russia's first trained scholar of Midrash,
who is now a full-time faculty member of Project Judaica, and
its Assistant Executive Director for academic affairs.
Dr. David E. Fishman, Professor of Jewish History at the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, who serves as Director of Project
Judaica, received doctoral grants from the Foundation in 1978
and 1979 while he was pursuing his doctoral studies at Harvard,
and a fellowship in 1995 to support his research on East European
Jewry. Dr. Fishman is the author of Russia’s First Modern
Jews (New York University Press); the forthcoming The
Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh University Press);
and numerous other publications dealing with Russian Jewry.
It’s a great source of naches for the Foundation that
a scholar we supported from the beginning of his scholarly career
has played such a pivotal role in creating a major academic body
engaged in pioneering academic and research activities in the
CIS, also with Foundation support. It is a perfect example of
the Foundation’s fulfillment of its mandate for the reconstruction
of Jewish cultural life around the world after the Shoah.
Best wishes for a joyous Chanukah.
Warm regards.
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum, Executive Vice-President |
