While the research guide is published on the book’s website, it is a distinct and separate project. It is intended to supplement A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture and its analysis of twentieth-century Jewish archives—which primarily focuses on Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine—with an overview of the global landscape of Jewish archival institutions and repositories. We hope it will be a resource for scholars pursuing research on Jewish history.
While the research guide represents a separate initiative, the materials presented here complement the book and its argument in a few ways.
First, this overview of Jewish archives highlights the ongoing proliferation of archives in modern Jewish life, which the book suggests is reflective of the rising value of archives in Jewish cultures around the world—such a “time to gather” and its concomitant impulse to preserve the Jewish past in the form of archives is connected with the powerful symbolism of Jewish communities, institutions, and individuals all wanting to hold these archives as symbols of their vitality and leadership in Jewish life.
Secondly, this research guide helps take the consideration of Jewish archives beyond the core case studies examined in the book, and offers information about Jewish archival initiatives in other parts of the world. It is our hope that this will underscore the ways in which Jewish archiving—and the issues relating to the control of Jewish culture—are not restricted to Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine, but are part of a worldwide phenomenon.
And thirdly, this research guide highlights the possibilities for the ongoing study of the history of Jewish archives as highlighted by A Time to Gather: Each of these archives has a history of its own and it highlights the developments and conflicts within its own specific cultural contexts, and they invite both the study of the histories that they document, as well as the symbolic and practical meaning of how Jews are continuing to respond to the impulses of a “time to gather” in Jewish culture around the world.