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....