Digitizing the Archive

Here's John Earle who is helping me photograph thousands of documents from the I.N. Steinberg archive. We're working at the offices here at YIVO ( Yiddish Institute for Social Research) at the Centre for Jewish History on 16th street in New York City. I feel as if I've stepped back in time to when my grandparents were alive since Yiddish is the primary language here. 

Green Light to Photograph RG366

Good News, the archivists are allowing us to photograph Steinberg's archive for a nominal fee. Our project will digitize part of I.N. Steinberg's archive and thereby preserve it from further decay- when we were in the archive the news clippings were literally crumbling in our laps as were the pamphlets and other gems. Every day I was covered with fine dust and specks of decaying paper. We should be paid for our digital preservation work not the other way around!

We'll be photographing thousands of documents ranging from the hundreds of letters he penned to his family during the four years he was based in Australia to the official Memoranda that was sent to the office of Prime Minister Menzies and later to Prime Minister John Curtin. There are also a few documents to Prime Minister Forde who held the office for a very brief period but who ultimately caused the plan to fail. There are hundreds of letters of support ranging from Deans of Australian universities, businessmen, Trade Union leaders, the Australia Council of Jewish Women as well as from members of the clergy, including the Archbishop of Australia reverend Pilcher. There are the photographs that Steinberg made on his expedition to the Kimberleys to survey the land. There are maps demarcating the 7 million acres of land that was to be purchased from the cattle ranching family the Duracks for the area of refuge ( see image above). All in all a ton of material. This overwhelming archive has given me the idea for how to shape the project. More as it happens...

Tackling the Archive..

New York, Monday June 29th: 

We started our research at The Center for Jewish History in which the voluminous I.N. Steinberg collection is held at YIVO; the Yiddish Institute for Research. The archive doesn't allow us to photograph any material and you can only request black and white photocopies--it is not designed for artists! We'll see if I can push them to digitize this part of the archive.

Before coming to New York, I read Steinberg's "Unpromised Land" about his four years in Australia when he single-handedly rallied the entire country/continent to get on board his Jewish Territorialist endeavor. Much of the country including heads of Australian Provinces were supportive of his scheme to turn East Kimberley into a Jewish colony. However, the Federal Govenment refused to change their immigration policy in the end.  Now I'm reading his hand written notes and the original manuscript version of this incredible Australian travelogue. Why hasn't a biography been written on this guy? Perhaps because he worked and thought in five languages and the archive reflects this.

Yesterday, I read Steinberg's correspondence with Robert Cosgrove -- the Premier of Tasmania; today I read the Freeland League's periodicals and learned that Steinberg was trying to resurrect the Suriname plan well into the 1950's. I never knew that even after the establishment of the State of Israel the Territorialists wouldn't give up. They were never convinced that Zion was the Promised Land.

What is striking is how much time and effort he spent on the Kimberley Plan while the Tasmania scheme was but a footnote and really the brainchild of Critchley Parker Jr.  More on this later.

Here are some of the YIVO people we've encountered so far at The Center for Jewish History:

Fruma Mohrer,  Senior Archivist
Lyudmila Sholokhova, Head Librarian and Acting Chief Archivist
Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor for the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO and curator of The Jewish Fight Club

Skyping with Adam Rovner

We are very lucky to have the territorialist trailblazer Adam Rovner as a consultant for our researches into Imaginary Jewish Homelands.  We talked over the best strategies for doing archival work in the I.N. Steinberg Archives at YIVO in New York.  We discussed how no one has yet written a biography of this polyglot in part because one would need mastery of Russian, Yiddish, German, English, and Dutch to do it right.  There are two hundred folders devoted to Steinberg's efforts in Australia alone and another fifty on the Saramacca plan in Suriname so we need to work efficiently.  Then there are the files that contain maps, photos, geographical surveys and data.  These materials will be vital given the extent to which our augmented reality project relies on visualization and geo-location.  Adam is not only an amazing tour guide through the archival and bibliographical materials but he also seems to know every key person (whether academic scholars, Jewish community members, or Steinberg descendants) with whom we need to connect when it comes to the topic of Jewish territorialism and imagined Jewish homelands in Suriname, Western Australia, and Tasmania. 
 

Meeting Jacob Steinberg and learning about Suriname

On Wednesday May 20th, Louis and I had lunch with Jacob Steinberg. Coincidentally, he shares the same last name and almost the same first name as the historical figure that is driving our project- I.N. Steinberg; or Yitzak Nachman Steinberg.  Jacob insists that there is no relation between the head of the Freeland League and himself- I'm not so convinced!  Jacob did point out one major difference -- he is a Zionist while I.N. was not. We contacted Jacob because when we started our research on Suriname we found out that he has been deeply involved with the very small Jewish community that still exists there and that he is based in Toronto (another uncanny coincidence).  He was very kind and offered to connect us to the leaders of the Suriname Jewish community, Lily and Jules whom he says keep that community going.  There are only about 150 Jews remaining there.  At one time the Jews owned 40% of the sugar plantations. Yes, they were also slave owners - after all this was the 1700s.

Jacob related to us that a monument has been created to commemorate the Jews of Suriname that died in the Holocaust and that a dedication ceremony will take place in the fall of 2015.  We are wondering if that would be a good time to make our first exploratory trip to find the places where we want to site our augments...

Welcome to Imaginary Jewish Homelands

On April 1st, 2015, I was notified by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada that my team won a 5 year grant that will take us to some of the most far-flung places on the globe. We have been funded to create a digital- humanities augmented reality project along similar lines to our highly successful pilot project Mapping Ararat. The three "promised lands" where we will be setting up augmented reality tours are Port Davey, Tasmania, Kimberley Western Australia and Suriname all of which were proposals that the leader of the Freeland League, I.N. Steinberg explored as possible safe havens for the Jews in and around the time of the Holocaust.

Our team consists of myself as primary investigator and lead artist,  co-applicant Professor Louis Kaplan who serves as the project's chief historian, collaborator Brian Sutherland who is our augmented reality programmer, Professor Adam Rovner who just published "In The Shadow of Zion" which is the definitive book on the Jewish Territorialist movement.

Our research will begin this July at The Center for Jewish History in New York City at YIVO where the Steinberg archive is held. But we have already begun....