No traces of the Second Lebanese War were apparent in early March, neither down by the Port of Haifa, nor anywhere in the stunning vistas surrounding Tzippori, an archeological park in the lower Galilee. Tzippori is the place where Rabbi Judah edited the Mishnah, today the site of exquisite excavated mosaics dating from Second Temple, Roman and Byzantine times.
Central Archives is Moving
In Jerusalem, we sat unconcerned in outdoor cafes, enjoying the early spring sunshine. The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) was in the throes of moving from the rented Catholic convent across from the President=s House on Jabotinsky Street to a couple of rectangular, box-like prefabricated units formerly used for student housing in a location called AHigh Tech Village@ on the far edge of Hebrew University’s Ramat Gan campus. CAHJP director Hadassah Assouline and I spent much of one afternoon stepping over broken concrete and scattered wire cables as her staff worked side-by-side with the painters and movers to ready the facility for its April 15 re-opening. As Assouline explained, because archival collections are stored in boxes, the packing isn=t as arduous as one might expect for an institution as large as hers.
The good news is that the new location will have a larger, brand new reading room for researchers and that ultimately, when the new Israeli National Library is built on the Givat Ram campus (in about seven to eight years), the CAHJP will have an entire wing in that facility. The bad news is that it will be somewhat difficult to locate at first. Visitors can access the facility in one of three waysCby a 15-minute walk from the front gate of the Ramat Gan campus, by car for those who telephone first to obtain driving directions and to alert campus security guards, or by taking the number 28 bus which runs between Hebrew University=s Mount Scopus and the Ramat Gan campuses. Get off at the last stop. The new telephone number is 972-2-658-6249. To view a map of the campus, see www.huji. ac.il/huji/map/givatramCampus.htm
Among the new collections is the lifetime genealogy collection of the Cuciel family of Geneva, Switzerland. Professor Dov Levin, known to many Jewish genealogists for his writings and conference lectures as “Mr. Lithuania” also plans to donate his papers to the CAHJP.
Activity at Yad Vashem
Although the construction at Yad Vashem has largely ended, it too was a bustling scene with approximately 30 young people, mostly students, computerizing names from lists found in various archival holdings. The day I visited, the group, using a complex method to check for equivalent spelling variants, was working on Russian names, entering 2,000 new names per day from the archival collection into Yad Vashem’s Central Database of names. Next, they will start on Hungarian names and are expected to increase their output to 5,000 names per day within the month. Lozowick’s goal is to add another one million names to the database by the end of 2007C900,000 names from the archives, 50,000 from new Pages of Testimony and another 50,000 names from external projects.
Yad Vashem updates the online version of its database from time to time. The previous updates took place in December 2006, with another at the start of April 2007. On the other hand, the in-house version, accessible from computers in its research room, reflects daily inputCa distinct incentive for serious genealogists to make a personal visit (or to find a friendly Jerusalemite to make the trip).
Alex Avraham, director of the Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, has his own personal names project. In consultation with Alexander Beider, Avraham is creating a Romanian dictionary of Jewish surnames (minus the Hungarian names) as his doctoral dissertation. Professor Aaron Demsky of Bar Ilan University serves as Avraham’s dissertation supervisor.
