Dear Colleagues and Friends,
We are living in history-making times. Not a day passes when we are not reminded that nothing we do is normal and routine and seemingly mundane aspects of life become significant markers of the moment: Leave the house but don’t forget the mask. Meet a friend but stand six feet apart to chat. Change swirls around us, but we have no inkling of what the future will bring. Historians, looking back on 2020 at the threshold of 5781, will see things that we may have missed, although we are living through these days. They will seek to make sense of our era for future generations.
What better moment, then, to ask “whose stories will become Jewish history?”
This is a question implicit in the mission of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, one that it aims to answer in the most broad and inclusive manner on topics that range from the esoteric to the everyday. The Posen Library collects texts of past centuries and strives to include the widest possible spectrum of Jewish voices across lines of class, gender, geography, and diverse media. It aims to open the possibility of contributing to the Jewish past to everyone, not just rabbis, philosophers, and intellectuals. The Posen Library seeks to document historical Jewish culture writ large in its various permutations including, of course, secular culture, but also many versions of religious culture.
Take, for example, this Minute-Book of a Psalms Society Serving in the Russian Army kept by a group of Jewish soldiers between 1864 and 1867, and probably recorded by Judah Scheindling. It can be found on the Posen Digital Library (free upon registration). The Minute-Book (pinkas) reflects simultaneously the conjoining of religious and secular. On the one hand (religious), it provides evidence of a sense of community that participating in religious activities provided Jewish soldiers in the Fourth Infantry Division of the Russian Army; on the other hand (secular), it reveals that Jews actively participated in military service. Young Jewish men were drafted into the army but they voluntarily joined a psalms society to connect with other Jews and to mark ritual occasions.
Images from Minute-Book of a Psalms Society Serving in the Russian Army (Images courtesy of The Mendel Gottesman Library, Yeshiva University, MS. 1150).
(Read more about Minute-Book of a Psalms Society Serving in the Russian Army and view these images for free on the PDL once you register.)
Before the new year, the experiences of Jewish soldiers, along with midwives, musicians, and, yes, rabbis, will headline a lively online program on September 10th that will ask whose stories will become Jewish history. What do we learn from including these Russian Jewish soldiers, recognizing their modest efforts to recite psalms to mark ritual moments and sustain a sense of Jewish solidarity? How do ideas about what Jewish history and culture is change when we include people like soldiers—including unwilling draftees?
Please join me on Zoom on Thursday, September 10th at 4 pm EDT for a conversation with Professor Elisheva Carlebach, editor of Confronting Modernity, 1750-1880, Volume 6 of The Posen Library, as well as author Dara Horn to explore these questions. The program also features the music of Itamar Borochov.
We are co-hosting this free event with the Center for Jewish History. You can learn more about this event at “Midwives, Musicians, Soldiers, Rabbis: Whose Stories Will Become Jewish History?” and reserve your ticket here.
Throughout the fall, we’ll be co-hosting other events with distinguished guests and partner organizations. You can find those details on The Posen Library Events Page. In fact, if you’re active on social media, you can keep up to date with everything The Posen Library is doing by following our daily posts on Twitter and Facebook.
In anticipation of the dawn of 5781, let me wish everyone a sweet new year.
Deborah Dash Moore
Editor in Chief
The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization
