The theme of this year at the Archives has been "getting used to
being the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives". It's an easy name
to answer to, but shaking off our previous email and web addresses
has been a sticky process. If any of you still have our "cjccc"
address in your contact lists, please change the text after the @
sign to "cjarchives.ca".
Among many interesting acquisitions of 2016, we were excited to
receive papers, photographs and artifacts from the family of
Justice Harry Batshaw. In addition to the insight which these
papers provide into the life and work of Justice Batshaw, the
collection also includes a rare early Workman's Circle group
photograph featuring his father.
Our understanding of the present state of Montreal's Hasidic
population has been recently been expanded by donations of
newspapers and other publications from various ultra-Orthodox
groups.
In 2016 we continued our exchange of materials with the Jewish
Public Library Archives, in order to fill gaps in their Federation
CJA records and in our JIAS and Labour Zionist fonds.
Our national office records of the National Council of Jewish
Women were enhanced by a sizable donation of archives from their
former head office in Winnpeg. These and other recently acquired
records of women's organizations became the nucleus of a internship
project in Canadian Jewish Studies which was carried out by Emily
Williams over the late summer and early fall of 2016. Ms. Williams
digitized samples from all of our women's organization collections
and helped us update our finding aid about materials relating to
women's groups.
Other student intern projects carried out in 2016 include the
catalgouing of a challenging collection of Asaf Ilizarov
Russian-language papers and photographs which we received many
years ago as a transfer from Library and Archives Canada. Their
cataloguing was accomplished by a talented Siberian-born University
of Montreal student, Zina Glasyrina.
Thanks to a student intern Katelynn Siddall from McGill
University we were able to complete the digitizing of Marie Berdugo
Cohen's 1988 interviews with members of Montreal's Sephardic
community. A montage of interview snippets chosen by Ms. Siddall
can be heard here: http://www.cjhn.ca/en/permalink/cjhn78008 .
In other digitization news, we have now made available online
the complete orginal Canadian Jewish Archives series by
Louis Rosenberg. Published by the Bureau of Social and Economic
Research of Canadian Jewish Congress between 1955 and 1962,
these unusual volumes provide access to a variety of the earliest
known documents in Canadian Jewish history, with some items
presented as facsimiles and some transcribed. To read or download
them in PDF format, go to: http://www.cjarchives.ca/en/c-j-archives/publications/.
Making these six Louis Rosenberg volumes available as a free
download is a precursor to more exciting digitization news expected
in the coming year, as, with our permission, the Bibliothèque et
Archives nationales de Québec will be digitizing the complete
Canadian Jewish Archives, new series by David Rome, as
well as some other Canadian Jewish Congress publications. We'll
provide links to those documents as soon as they are online on the
BAnQ website.
We are also happy to report that the Jewish Genealogical Society
of Montreal has provided us with another generous grant, which will
fund the translation of Yiddish obituaries from the Keneder
Adler newspaper from 1937 through to the end of 1939. The
content of these notices will be available for research via the
Canadian Jewish Heritage Network website at http://cjhn.ca, where obituaries from 1908 into
the thirties can already be found.