A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture

281 Pages·2021·1.691 MB·English

by  Jason Lustig

A Time to Gather
THE OXFORD SERIES ON HISTORY AND ARCHIVES
General Editors:
Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg,
University of Michigan
Processing the Past: Changing Authorities in History and the Archives
Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg
“Collect and Record!”: Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Postwar Europe
Laura Jockusch
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in
the Wake of the Holocaust
Lisa Moses Leff
Religion in Secular Archives: Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge
Sonja Luehrmann
A Time to Gather
Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture
JASON LUSTIG
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Lustig, Jason, author.
Title: A time to gather : archives and the control of Jewish culture /
Jason Lustig.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Series: The Oxford series on history and archives |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027795 (print) | LCCN 2021027796 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197563526 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197563540 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197563557
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish archives—G ermany. |
Jewish archives— United States. | Jewish archives—P alestine. |
Jewish diaspora—G ermany. | Jewish diaspora—U nited States. |
Jews— Identity. | Collective memory.
Classification: LCC DS134 .L87 2022 (print) | LCC DS134 (ebook) |
DDC 026/ .90904924— dc23
LC record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2021027795
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2021027796
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197563526.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Archival Totality in the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden 20
2. Ingathering the Exiles of the Past? Bringing Archives
to Jerusalem 52
3. An Archive of Diaspora at the “Jerusalem on the Ohio” 85
4. Making the Past into History: Jewish Archives and Postwar
Germany 116
5. Digitization, Virtual Collections, and Total Archives in the
Twenty- First Century 148
Conclusion 174
Notes 181
Bibliography 235
Index 261

Acknowledgments
This book is grounded in the principle that the study of the past is only
possible with the support of those in the present. It is true about histor-
ical research at large, which is built upon the tireless work of archivists and
librarians, both those of generations past who gathered and preserved histor-
ical material and those who continue to make sources accessible today. And
it is especially true for a book like this one, which over the years has been sus-
tained through a community of colleagues, mentors, friends, and loved ones
to whom I must offer my sincere gratitude.
This book began in my years at UCLA, where David N. Myers provided
constant support and guidance. David’s teaching was not just about Jewish
history itself. He also modeled what it means to be a historian and why what
we do matters, which has helped shape me into the kind of scholar I aspire to
be. Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Todd Presner, and David Sabean, along with many
others, also opened innumerable intellectual doors and pathways. Moreover,
I must express thanks to my teachers through the years who nurtured my
passion for Jewish studies, especially Eugene Sheppard and Jonathan Sarna.
A book like this one would have been impossible to write without research
support and fellowships from institutions that have believed in me and this
project. The Institute of European Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley, provided a fellowship that, together with the Elka Klein Memorial
Grant, underwrote my first research trips to Germany. Fellowships from
American Jewish Archives in 2012 and the Leo Baeck Institute and the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research in 2013 brought me to Cincinnati and New York.
The Association for Jewish Studies’ Dissertation Completion Fellowship, a
Harry Starr fellowship at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, and the Leo
Baeck Institute’s Gerald Westheimer Early Career Fellowship afforded me
opportunities to revise my dissertation and complete the book manuscript.
And I have been lucky to land at the University of Texas at Austin, where the
Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies has been a wonderful intellectual and
institutional home, which together with the Israel Institute has enabled me
to bring this work to fruition. In addition, the publication of this book has
viii Acknowledgments
been supported by a College of Liberal Arts Subvention Grant awarded by
The University of Texas at Austin.
I should offer profound thanks to the countless archivists and archival staff
who opened the doors to this history, often through extraordinary means
of providing internal files otherwise unavailable for research: Gary Zola,
Kevin Proffitt, and Dana Herman at the American Jewish Archives; Batia
Leshem and Rochelle Rubenstein at the Central Zionist Archives; Yochai
Ben- Ghedaliah, Hadassah Assouline, Inka Arroyo, and the entire staff at the
Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People; Frank Mecklenberg
and Hermann Teifer at the Leo Baeck Institute; YIVO’s Fruma Mohrer
and Marek Web; Tanya Elder and Melanie Meyers at the American Jewish
Historical Society; Michael Lenarz at the Jüdisches Museum in Frankfurt
am Main; Gerald Bönnen and Martin Geyer at the Worms Stadtarchiv;
Christine Axer and Christina Ahrend at the Hamburg Staatsarchiv; Marie-
Ange Duvignacq and Anne Fellinger at the Archives départementales du
Bas- Rhin in Strasbourg; Lorenz Heiligensetzer at the University of Basel’s
manuscripts division; Helena Vilinski and Yaacov Lozowick at the Israel State
Archives; Leah Teichtal, Tzvi Bernhardt, and Haim Gertner at Yad Vashem;
Peter Honigmann at the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der
Juden in Deutschland in Heidelberg; Susanne Ulsu-P auer at the Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde in Vienna; Sabine Gresens at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin–
Lichterfelde; Sven Kriese at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv– Preußisches
Kulturbesitz in Berlin– Dahlem. I also relied on numerous library staff who
provided materials both in person and electronically, including Zachary
Loeb and the whole staff of the Center for Jewish History; Sheryl Stahl,
Melissa Simmons, Israela Ginsburg, and David J. Gilner at Hebrew Union
College– Jewish Institute of Religion’s Klau Library in Cincinnati; and finally
the staffs of UCLA’s Young Research Library, Harvard’s Widener Library and
the Judaica Division including Charlie Berlin, and the University of Texas
at Austin’s Perry- Castañeda Library, who over the years have processed
thousands of inter-l ibrary loan and scan requests.
Many colleagues have read portions of this book over the years in various
workshops, writing groups, and seminars, and they have helped shape it into
what it has become with their insightful feedback. This list includes Ceren Abi,
Jorge Arias, Max Baumgarten, A. J. Berkovitz, Aleksandra Bunčić, Michael
Casper, Kate Craig, Arnon Degani, Idan Dershowitz, Rebecca Dufendach,
Joshua Frens- String, Alma Heckman, Joshua Herr, Lindsay King, Martina
Mampieri, Nathan Mastnjack, Laura Ritchie Morgan, Shari Rabin, Kathryn
Acknowledgments ix
Renton, Megan Raby, David Sclar, and David Stern, among countless others.
Michael Silber, Michael A. Meyer, Jason Kalman, Ben Outwaithe, and Roni
Shweka also have provided useful primary sources and secondary materials.
I am also grateful to my editor at Oxford University Press, Nancy Toff, who
championed the project and has helped shepherd it. Additionally, I should
thank Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg who, as academic editors of
the series, worked closely with me as I developed the book, read numerous
drafts, and offered their thoughtful comments. Further, I would like to ex-
press my appreciation to Suganya Elango and the whole production staff, and
also to Joseph Stuart for developing the index.
Finally, I must thank my wife and partner, Adra Lustig, who agreed to up-
root our lives and take on a peripatetic existence, when for years we did not
remain in the same place for more than a few months at a time. As I sit here
typing late at night, I am reminded of the sacrifices you have made over the
years, and I am ever grateful for the trust you’ve placed in me that in the end
it will have been worthwhile. Our daughters, Sylvie and Eleanor, who were
born in the midst of this project, have also grown as the book has come into
focus. Every day with them has been a blessing. It is to Sylvie and Eleanor that
I dedicate A Time to Gather: This book is about those who devoted their lives
and energies to preserving in some manner Jewish culture so that it might
be passed down from generation to generation— a task that, as I look to you,
I know is not in vain.