Documenting October 7: Collecting for the Sake of History
Presented with the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania
Zoom
Free and Open to the Public
How will people in the future understand our times as the present becomes the past?
The recollection and memory of historians and the public alike depends on the careful work of recording, collection, and preservation that allow those who come after us to make sense of this moment.
The creation of an archive is therefore a powerful responsibility. Important in ordinary times, it becomes more urgent in moments of crisis. How, during critical historical junctures, are decisions made about what will be important for that critical work in the near and distant futures?
In this session, two scholars discuss their activities over the past year in building collections that document events in Israel and the United States since the deadly October 7 attacks on Israel, during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, and in the turmoil on American college campuses.
Featuring
Ari Y. Kelman
Stanford University
Ari Y. Kelman is the Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and director of the Berman Archive. Kelman's research focuses on the forms and practices of religious knowledge transmission. He publishes regularly in both scholarly and popular venues. He is the author of Shout to the Lord: Making Worship Music in Evangelical America (NYU, 2018) and Jewish Education, part of Rutgers University Press’ Keywords in Jewish Studies series as well as a co-editor of Jewish Social Studies. In 2022, Kelman led the Task Force on the Jewish Experience at Stanford which surfaced evidence of antisemitism in Stanford Admissions during the 1950s.
Raquel Ukeles
National Library of Israel
Raquel Ukeles is the head of collections of the National Library of Israel (NLI). Ukeles is responsible for the overall development of all the Library's collections and for digital, cultural and educational initiatives based on the NLI collections as well as in partnership with other institutions. She is the chief editor of 101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel (2023). Since October 7. Ukeles 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 7 and its aftermath both in Israel and abroad. Ukeles received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2006 in comparative Islamic and Jewish studies. She has published and taught on a wide array of subjects related to Jewish intellectual history, Arab culture in Israeli society, Jewish and Islamic traditions, and the role of national libraries today.
Cosponsors
