The Fifth International Judaica Curators Conference:

Collaborative Leadership in Judaica Curating

  • Monday
  • May 20th
  • 08:30
The National Library of Israel, Kaplan 1 Jerusalem
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Map

The Fifth International Judaica Curators Conference is an invitation-only event for professional curators. Registration is now closed. Selected portions of the conference will be recorded and made available to the public on the NLI website.

Collaborative leadership represents a transformative approach that is reshaping our work as Judaica curators and collection developers. This model emphasizes the value of shared responsibility and the importance of teamwork for engaging with the challenges and new opportunities in our field.

This year’s conference highlights three areas that necessitate collaborative leadership: digital collecting and curating, endangered archives, and provenance.  On each of the three days of the conference, we will first listen to a keynote address outlining the theoretical issues in one particular area and then move on to a discussion of the concrete, practical steps that should be considered when shaping a future agenda.   

The conference will be held Monday, May 20–Wednesday, May 22 at the new home of the National Library of Israel, 1 Kaplan Street, Jerusalem.

On the first day, we invite you to engage in a pivotal discussion on making Jewish web archives and digital collections more comprehensive, representative, and accessible. We will explore how open communication and shared standards for digitization and metadata creation can foster interoperability among digital collections, thus enabling a richer experience for exploring our Jewish heritage.

Our focus on the second day will be the preservation of endangered Jewish archives. We will examine and define the different kinds of risks encountered across a range of social, historic, and economic contexts and their specific implications for Jewish archives in different formats. We will then consider strategies and schemes for alleviating these risks, focusing on collective responsibility and cooperation. A practical model for a first-response “task-force” approach toward sustainable and coherent solutions for Jewish archives at risk will be proposed.

On the third day, we will begin by examining the impact of new digital collections on traditional libraries. Next, we will turn our attention to the world of provenance in Judaic books and manuscripts by first exploring a series of provenance case studies and then discussing how best to implement the recommendations of the White Paper on Judaica Provenance.  We encourage you to review the white paper, Cultivating Best Practices in Provenance, in the edition prepared expressly for this gathering.

The following day, on May 23, the NLI and the Israeli Ministry of Heritage are co-sponsoring a one-day conference entitled Israeli Archives and Special Collections. Conference participants are invited to join the morning session.

The International Curators Conference is supported by the National Library of Israel and 'Gesher L'Europa - A Bridge to Europe,' a program of Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.

We wish to thank the members of the Conference Steering Committee: Enrique Chmelnik, Shimon Iakerson, Eitan Kensky, Sharon Mintz, Ben Outhwaite, Emil Schrijver, and Dan Tsakhor.

Day One: May 20, 2024

Web Archiving and Digital Collections

Registration opens (on level -2)
All conference sessions will take place in seminar rooms 1&2 on level -2 unless otherwise indicated

 

Welcoming Remarks
Dr. Chaim M. Neria, Curator, Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection, NLI
Sallai Meridor, Chairman of the Board, NLI 

Connection and Collaboration: A New Outlook for the NLI, Oren Weinberg, CEO, NLI
Keynote: Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the Digital Age 
Professor Peter Baldwin, Professor of History at University of California, Los Angeles; Global Distinguished Professor at New York University; and Co-Founder of the Arcadia Foundation

Moderator: Dr. Raquel Ukeles, Head of Collections, NLI

 

Coffee Break

Professor Anat Ben-David, Associate Professor, Open University, Co-Founder of the Open University’s Open Media and Information Lab

Moderator: Hana Cooper, Selector of Digital Collections, NLI

Moderator: Chaim Neria, NLI

Note: These discussion groups will take place simultaneously. Please use the Google form to register for one.

  1. Curating the Jewish Web – Building an International Task Force
    Hana Cooper, NLI
    [Seminar rooms 1&2]
  2. Web Archiving and the Right To Be Forgotten
    Adv. Agnes Peresztegi, Soffer Avocats 
    [Seminar room 3]
  3. Jewish European Heritage Websites
    Rebecca Singer, Communications & Grants Manager, Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe 
    [Havatzelet room level -1]
  4. The Jewish Latin America Internet Sphere
    Dr. Tessy Schlosser, CEO, Mexican Jewish Documentation and Research Center 
    [Rimon room level -1]

     

Lunch on the Patio

[Level -2 outside the seminar rooms]

Moderator: Dr. Tsafra Siew, Digital Humanities Project Manager, NLI
Presentations of Case Studies
  • The Development of Harvard Digital Collections from 1994 to Present Day
    Violet Radnofsky, Littauer Hebraica Technical and Research Services Librarian, Harvard University
  • Digitization of Hebraica at the Library of Congress
    Yoram Bitton, Head of the Hebraic Section in the African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress
  • The Use of Jewish-Moroccan Heritage as a Teaching Tool
    Paul Dahan, Director of the Center for Jewish-Moroccan Culture (CJMC) in Brussels
  • Utilizing Historical Documents to Promote Jewish Heritage in Uruguay
    Shai Abend, Director of La Experiencia Judía in Montevideo, Uruguay

Coffee break

Please meet at the Ruppin entrance (level -2)

Wine and cheese reception in the outdoor amphitheater at the conclusion of the tour

Day Two: May 21, 2024

Endangered Archives

Registration desk opens

Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia, Executive Director, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) 
Keynote: The Jewish Condition and the Ever-Endangered Jewish Archive
Professor David Fishman, Department of Jewish History, Jewish Theological Seminary 
Respondent: Dr. Gabor Kadar, Director, Yerusha Project, Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe 

Moderator: Caron Sethill, Program Manager –  Europe, NLI

Coffee break

Note: These discussion groups will take place simultaneously. Please use the Google form to register for one.

  1. Endangered Languages: Collaborating to Preserve and Revitalize Jewish Languages
    Sarah Bunin Benor, Hebrew Union College and
    Yehudit Henshke, Haifa University
    Dr. Ahava Cohen, Director of Cataloguing, NLI
    [Seminar rooms 1&2]
  2. Endangered Archives in Conflict: Case Studies from Ukraine
    Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia, Director, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
    Anna Furman, CEO, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre
    Professor David Fishman, Jewish Theological Seminary
    Anastasia Glazanova, Coordinator, Digital Projects at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
    [Seminar room 3]​
  3. Rescuing Small and Community Archives: Israel and Europe
    Hila Zaksenberg, NLI
    Dr. Gabor Kadar
    Dr. Zsuzanna Toronyi, Director Hungarian Museum and Jewish Archives
    [Havatzelet room level -1]
  4. Archiving Haredi Collections
    Rabbi Dovid Kamenetsky, Mechon Pirkei Eliezer: Institute for the Publication of Rabbinic Manuscripts, Esther Farbstein, Head, Center for Holocaust Studies at Michlalah–Jerusalem College and Academic Advisor, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem and Dr. Chaim Neria, NLI
    [Rimon room level -1]

Collaborative Leadership to Meet the Challenges of Endangered Archives

Moderator: Caron Sethill, NLI

Sally Berkovic, CEO, Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe

Dr. Lara Lempert, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Lunch

Documenting the Events of October 7 and Its Aftermath in Israel and the World—Initial Reports and Perspectives

Moderator: Dr. Raquel Ukeles, Head of Collections

  • Documenting Trauma in Modern Jewish History- from Kishinev to October 7
    Dr. Mali Eisenberg, Director of Education, Beit Lohamei Haghetaot
  • Building the NLI’s October 7 Archive-Updates from the Field
    Dr. Hezi Amiur, Israel Collection Curator, NLI
  • The Challenges of Digital Collecting in Real Time
    Panel discussion with Attorney Noa Diamond, Privacy Clinic, Tel Aviv University and Dr. Roni Mikel-Arieli, Academic Director of the Oral History Division, Hebrew University 

 

Sponsored by the Ministry of Heritage. Photography by Daniel Tchetchik

Dinner at the National Library of Israel, featuring Matti Friedman and Ben Balint

Conversation between writers Matti Friedman and Ben Balint, winners of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

Moderator: Dr. Diana Lipton, Board Chair of the Jerusalem Culture Unlimited and a judge for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

Day Three: May 22, 2024

Provenance; Digital and Traditional Curating

Registration desk opens

Panel discussion with Sara Wolkenfeld, Chief Learning Officer, Sefaria

 Eyal Miller, Historical Jewish Press, NLI

 Dr. Alison Joseph, Director of Digital Scholarship, Gratz College

Moderator: Dr. Chaim M. Neria

Coffee break

Note: These discussion groups will take place simultaneously. Please use the Google form to register for one.

Moderators: Michelle Margolis, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies at Columbia University, President of the Association of Jewish Libraries and Dr. Yoel Finkelman, Manager of Archival Acquisitions, Yad Vashem

  1. Provenance of Objects Looted by the Nazis
    Dr. Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek
    Director of the Curatorial Education Program for the Association of European Jewish Museums, Vienna
    [Seminar rooms 1&2]
  2. Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Task Force
    Dr. Rachel Greenblatt
    Judaic Librarian, Brandeis University
    [Seminar room 3]
  3. Methodologies in Provenance Research
    Dr. Balázs Tamási, Library Director
    Jewish Theological Seminary – University of Jewish Studies, Budapest
    [Havatzelet room level -1]
  4. Focus on Local Provenance
    Dr. Zsuzsanna Toronyi
    Director of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, Budapest
    [Rimon room level -1]
  5. KTIV and Provenance
    Yitzchak Gila
    Director of Manuscripts Department, NLI
    [Room to be announced]

 

Lunch on the Patio

[Level -2 outside the seminar rooms]

Note: These discussion groups will take place simultaneously. Please use the Google form to register for one discussion.

  1. How Do We Build a Community of Practice?
    Sharon Mintz, Curator of Jewish Art, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and William Gross, Director, The Gross Family Collection
    [Seminar rooms 1&2]
  2. Do We Need a New Provenance Database?
    Dr. Rachel Greenblatt, Brandeis University Libraries, and Bettina Farack, Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem
    [Seminar room 3]
  3. Finding Creative Solutions for Provenance Dilemmas
    Adv. Agnes Peresztegi and Dr. Yoel Finkelman, Yad Vashem
    [Havetzelet room level -1]

From Collaboration to Community

Encounters of Beauty: Hebrew Manuscripts from  the Braginsky Collection and the National Library of Israel

About the Israeli Conference

Conference on Israeli Archives and Special Collections

On Thursday, March 23, following the International Judaica Curators Conference, the NLI will be hosting a one-day conference in collaboration with the Israel Archive Network entitled Israeli Archives and Special Collections. The Israel Archive Network, which has been under the auspices of the NLI since 2011, works to digitize archival materials and make them accessible to the public in a comprehensive catalog. This one-day conference is an unparalleled opportunity to become acquainted firsthand with the wide variety of local archives in Israel: kibbutzim, cultural institutions, community associations, and key personalities in Israeli history and society. The morning session will be conducted in English.

As part of this year’s conference, the Israel Archive Network has commissioned an original digital exhibition of documentary photographs taken at forty archives around Israel by photographer Daniel Tchetchik.

The Israeli Archive Network is a joint project of the Ministry of Heritage, the NLI and the Association of Israeli Archivists.

Speakers

Shai Abend Abudara

Community entrepreneur, educator, and tour guide. He serves as the founder and director of 'Bereshit: The Jewish Experience', a non-profit community initiative that provides innovative educational, cultural, and touristic programs aimed at engaging individuals with Jewish heritage in Uruguay. He also leads efforts in establishing the local Jewish Museum and the Community Documentation Center.

Shai Abend Abudara

Professor Peter Baldwin

Research Professor, UCLA; Global Distinguished Professor NYU.  Author most recently of Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All.  Serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Wikimedia Endowment, the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies, and is chair of the Board of the Center for Jewish History.  Chair of the Arcadia Fund, one of Britain’s largest philanthropies.

Shai Abend Abudara

Benjamin Balint

Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem

Author of "Kafka's Last Trial," which won the Sami Rohr Prize, and "Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History," which won a National Jewish Book Award.

Shai Abend Abudara

Ahava Cohen

Head, Cataloging Section, National Library of Israel

Anat Ben-David

Associate professor in the department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication. She is co-founder of the Open University's Open Media and Information Lab (OMILab). Focusing on New Media, her primary research interests are history and geopolitics of the Web, Digital STS, social and political studies of social media, and digital and computational methods for Web research.

Shai Abend Abudara

Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia

Executive Director

Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP)

Shai Abend Abudara

Sally Berkovic

CEO of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, supporting a range of Jewish cultural heritage projects across Europe. Based in London, Sally is also the author of two books – Under My Hat, exploring the issues of Orthodoxy and feminism, and Death Duties, focussed on the Chevra Kadisha.

Sarah Bunin Benor

Vice Provost, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics, and Director, Jewish Language Project, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

Works on documenting Jewish languages and making resources available online.

Shai Abend Abudara

Yoram Bitton

Hebraica Section Head in the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress

Hana Cooper

Hana Cooper is the Digital Collection Selector at the National Library of Israel, and works at managing the NLI Internet Archive and coordinating the Bearing Witness: Documenting October 7 and Its Aftermath project at the library. Alongside her work at the library, Hana is also a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Paul Dahan

Psychoanalyst and collector of Moroccan Jewish heritage.

My interests lie in everything to do with questions of identity and memory.

Attorney Noa Diamond

Privacy Clinic, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. Member of the “Legal First Aid during Wartime” project, a group of jurists from academia and the field of legal practice that offers pro-bono legal consultancy on privacy, internet law and copyright issues to civil society initiatives in the aftermath of events of October 7th and the war that followed.

Dr. Mali Eizenberg

Researcher of history, Department of the History of Israel and Contemporary Judaism, Bar Ilan University. Her research focuses on Holocaust and memory.

Bettina Farack

Project Coordinator, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem. We are presently documenting the provenance of all the books in the collection of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem to gain insights into the collection's history. As part of our efforts to make provenance research more accessible, we're spearheading the Library of Lost Books initiative, inviting the public to join us in searching for Nazi-looted books in collections worldwide.

Esther Farbstein

Head, Center for Holocaust Studies at Michlalah–Jerusalem College and Academic Advisor, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem

Dr. Yoel Finkelman

Director of Acquisitions, Yad Vashem Archives. I am currently working on a book analyzing the theological content of passages from the notebooks of the mysterious Mr. Shoshani, focusing on the paradoxes of living an honest and religiously meaningful life in a world which dictates to us so much, against our will.

Photo: Yorai Leiberman

Photo: Yorai Leiberman

Professor David E. Fishman

David E. Fishman is professor of history at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, focusing on the Jews of Russia and eastern Europe. He directs the Jewish Archival Survey in Ukraine and recently co-edited Jewish Documentary Sources in Lviv Archives: A Guide. Fishman visits Ukraine frequently and publishes the weekly online newsletter The War in Ukraine: Jewish News. His book The Book Smugglers , on the “Paper Brigade” of the Vilna ghetto, won the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category.

Matti Friedman

Author and journalist. His 2019 book Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, won the Natan Book Award and the Canadian Jewish Book Award. Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War (2016) was chosen as a New York Times’ Notable Book. The Aleppo Codex won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize.

Photo: Yorai Leiberman

Anna Furman

Chief Operating Officer at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, since 2019 (Kyiv, Ukraine). Specialized in cultural management / innovative research in archival and museum fields / visual presentation of online products and their web development. Head of the "Names" project, where the research team managed to recover over 1,300 new names of the victims of Babyn Yar. Winner of the Red Dot and Webby Award in 2022-2023.

Anastasia Glazanova

Coordinator of digitization projects at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

William Gross

Director, Gross Family Collection.

Continuing my research in the field of Jewish amulets, with two articles in progress. I am in the process of selling my collection, so the issue of provenance is a daily conundrum for me.

Photo: Yorai Leiberman

Dr. Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek

PhD in Jewish Studies and Art History; since 1984 working in the area of exhibitions and museums; visiting professorships at different European universities; since 2014 head of the Curatorial Education Program of the Association of European Jewish Museum focusing on Jewish material cultures, provenance research, and curating topics of historical culture and contemporary history. Numerous exhibitions and publications about Jewish material cultures, cultural remembrance, contemporary history and provenance research on Judaica objects.

Yehudit Henshke

Yehudit Henshke is a professor in the Department of Hebrew Language at the Bar-Ilan University and a senior member at The Academy of the Hebrew Language. Her fields of interest include Mishnaic Hebrew, Jewish languages, Judeo-Arabic, and Modern Hebrew. She has published books and various articles related to these fields. She is the editor of the journal Carmillim: For the Study of Hebrew and Related Languages. She is the founder and director of Mother Tongue – a preservation project and documentation of Jewish languages and cultures.

She has been conducting a broad research projects on Mizrahi Hebrew, which considers the influence of Judeo-Arabic and the traditional Hebrew of the Islamic Jewish communities on contemporary Hebrew.

 

Dr. Alison Joseph

Director of Digital Scholarship, Gratz College.

Responsible for the development of Grayzel, the new digital archive and web platform of Gratz College including the Elie Wiesel Digital Archive.

Dr. Gabor Kadar

Director of the Yerusha Project, Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe

David Kraemer

Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian at The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also serves as Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics.  The Library is currently preparing a major exhibition for the Grolier Club, for fall 2025, to be accompanied by the publication of a book devoted to its Special Collections.

Dr. Lara Lempert

Head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania and the curator of its Judaica collection. Her fields of expertise are Jewish classical texts and the cultural history of the European and Lithuanian Jewry. She is an author of numerous articles and editor of several books, curator of exhibitions, participant and organizer of Lithuanian and international cultural and academic events dedicated to Jewish culture.

Dr. Diana Lipton

Diana Lipton has taught Hebrew Bible at Newnham College, Cambridge, King’s College London, Hebrew University's International School, and Tel Aviv University, and has published books on subjects including biblical dreams, the ‘reception’ of the book of Lamentations, and food in the Torah. She chairs the board of Jerusalem Culture Unlimited (JCU), and is a judge for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

Michelle Margolis

Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, Columbia University, Co-director, Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place, President, Association of Jewish Libraries

Dr. Roni Mikel-Arieli

Academic director, Oral History Division, Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Founding member of the Forum for Wartime Documentary Initiatives

Eyal Miller

Jewish Historical Press project manager, National Library of Israel

Sharon Liberman Mintz

Curator of Jewish Art at the Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary. I am currently focusing on exhibitions at the JTS Library including an exhibition of treasures that will open in September 2025 at the Grolier Club in Manhattan. In addition, I am co-editing a book on masterpieces of Judaica from the Sassoon family and co-editing a book on the history of Codex Sassoon.

Dr. Chaim M. Neria

Curator of the National Library's Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection. Dr. Neria completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago in 2015 on Hebrew translations and interpretations of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in the Middle Ages. He also holds an MA in conflict resolution and peace studies from Notre Dame University and a BA in international relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Neria previously worked for seven years as Chief Speechwriter at the Office of the President of the State of Israel.

Adv. Agnes Peresztegi

Soffer Avocats, Paris, Senior Attorney specializing in Holocaust era property and looted art claims, instrumental in the passage of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 in the United States.

Violet Radnofsky

Littauer Hebraica Technical and Research Services Librarian in the Judaica Division at Harvard Library, Harvard University.   Responsible for digitization and collaboration with institutions and private collections, particularly in Israel. The Harvard Judaica Digital Collection includes seven million images, 2,000 videos and 11,000 audio clips.

Dr. Tessy Schlosser

Director General, Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México (Mexican Jewish Documentation and Research Center).

Caron Sethill

Caron Sethill is Programme Manager Europe at the National Library of Israel (NLI) managing the Gesher L'Europa program to strengthen the library's connections with Jewish Heritage institutions in Europe, and to share our collections with people working in Jewish settings in Europe.  She has developed professional training for heritage professionals, drawing on the NLI's expertise to raise awareness and to find appropriate solutions for Endangered Jewish Archives in Central Europe and beyond.

Rebecca Singer

Communications and Grants Manager (Archives & Libraries)

Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe

Dr. Balázs Tamási

Library director and associate professor at Jewish Theological Seminary - University of Jewish Studies (formerly Budapest Rabbinical Seminary). He previously served as the curator of Kaufmann Collection at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. At the Library of the JTS-UJSH, he led the restoration and digitisation of the entire collection of old Hebrew manuscripts, now available in the Ktiv database.

Dr. Raquel Ukeles

Head of Collections of the National Library of Israel.  From 2010-2020, she was Curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection. Since October 7th, Raquel has spearheaded "Bearing Witness," the NLI's long-term project to collect, preserve, and open access to a wide array of documentation materials related to October 7th and its aftermath both in Israel and abroad. 

Photo of the NLI reading hall
Photo: Yoni Kelberman