Pandemic Religion: A Digital Archive

Items

• Preserving the Present

  Guided by desire to preserve personal stories for historians of the future and for current processing of the pandemic's impact in the Jewish community. Currently collecting photos and screenshots; stories and poems; 2020-specific Haggadot; websites and email communications from synagogues, Jewish organizations, and other related institutions. Eventually interested in physical objects, including calendars, take-out receipts, "closed" signs, masks, and other items. Limited geographic scope to Maryland. Directed outreach to Jews of color, Jewish LGBTQ groups, and specific congregations across major denominations (Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist). Publicized online through institutional email, website, and social media. Reaching out to local Jewish news and synagogue newsletters. Conducting digital workshops to facilitate the creation of written stories. Expanded focus of collecting effort to include experiences of protests for racial justice in Baltimore and around the state. Few submissions up to now, but expansion of staff and volunteer energy on this project is hoped to yield results through greater outreach efforts. Collecting digital material online through Google Forms and email.

• Collecting These Times Oral History Project

  CAJM is providing training and technical support to Jewish museums seeking to record diverse Jewish experiences of the pandemic period, utilizing the TheirStory online recording platform. Additionally, they are developing approaches to inclusive collecting and are steering donations of material culture to museums. Publicized through CAJM website and email list. This is a collection focused on diverse Jewish experiences.

• COVID-19 Guidance and Resources

  Collection of latest guidance (including responsa on religious issues and statements on current events) from the Rabbinical Council of America. Numerous individual authors are represented in these documents.

• COVID-19 Resources

  Curated list of resources including practical guides and spiritual resources regarding Jewish responses to Covid-19. Although not framed as an archival project, this list includes items submitted by individuals.

• Beth Israel Covid 19 Archive

  Internally-focused collection of documents relating to Congregation Beth Israel and Covid-19. Limited in geographic scope and demographic scope to this Reform synagogue in Houston, Texas. Publicity is similarly limited to institutional channels. Collection in digital and physical formats includes all newsletters, communications to congregants, sermons, videos of virtual services, and community press relating to Beth Israel.

• Toronto Jewry and the Coronovirus Pandemic: An Interview Project

  In contrast to archival collecting efforts, this project focuses on individual interviews from a selected group of individuals (spiritual leaders, community activists, educators, philanthropists, non-profit directors, and small business owners) about Toronto Jewish communal life and the social, cultural, and religious disruptions caused by the spread of COVID-19.

• Collecting These Times Oral History Project

  This project will provide a snapshot for researchers and future generations of what being Jewish in Oregon in 2020 was like—how we have collectively and individually experienced the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, struggles for justice, and the 2020 presidential election. As archivists, we know the value of oral histories and documentation of current events. We have had many requests for information about the 1918 pandemic in Oregon and we are sorry to say that we have no relevant archival materials. We are grateful to CAJM for this opportunity to create a robust repository of our community's experience—our goal is to capture 150 personal stories. Trained volunteers will work with staff to record online interviews with members of our community. Interviews will be approximately 40-60 minutes in length. We will be using the TheirStory video recording platform, which works much like Zoom except that it requires no prior knowledge or software from the person being interviewed. We are looking for Jewish community members of all ages and backgrounds to be interviewed, and we are hoping you might be interested in participating. If you are interested in being interviewed, please simply respond to this email and let me know.

• COVID-19 Documentation Project

  This project is specifically requesting photos, films, audio, video recordings, journals and reflections, email correspondence, recipes, and artwork (digital captures of music, drawing, poetry, and painting). Items are submitted through an online form for digital materials or by contacting an archivist to submit physical objects. Sharing initial submissions online on the institutional website (mostly photos with brief reflections, including pictures from Passover, first responders, and empty playgrounds with Covid-19 signs).

• #ForTheFuture

  Appeal to sense of individual as "chronicler of history" to help capture the current moment for the future. Focus: New England (geographic); Jewish individuals, organizations, and communities (demographic). All formats invited. Examples include physical and born-digital materials, found materials, specifically-created materials. Produced prompts for submission (biographical introduction; personal impact on you; impact on family, work, or communal life; impact on your Jewish life; looking to the future). Submission through online form.

• COVID-19: Toward a Meaningful Snapshot of the American Jewish Community in 2020

  Collecting the stories of 36 individuals to comprise a representational picture of Jewish experiences in the Covid-19 pandemic. Interest in individuals whose personal and professional experiences shaped the pandemic's impact. It identifies priorities for diversity in race, generation, sexual orientation, gender identity, professional role, institutions, ability and disability, geography, and denominations. Commitment and capturing idiosyncratic or counter-cultural perspectives that can speak to experiences outside the mainstream of the Jewish community.

• Health, Emotional, Financial & Religious Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Jewish Community

  The survey conducted from May 14 to May 19 is the first study to broadly explore the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the Jewish community. Focus on 860 respondents based on the United States sought representative samples of Orthodox and non-Orthodox groups. Still, Haredi were underrepresented in the former group, and Reform and unaffiliated were underrepresented in the latter. This opt-in online survey found respondents through Jewish organizations and social media. The survey sought to capture the health, emotional, financial, and religious impacts of coronavirus in the Jewish community.

• Story Aperture: Reflections in Quarantine

  This set of questions formulated in response to the current moment utilizes JWA's pre-existing digital infrastructure for recording and submitting stories through its mobile application Story Aperture. In contrast to previous projects which focused on Jewish women's stories, these questions invite Jewish people of all genders to share their experience of the pandemic. An audio recording, brief written narrative, and a photo can also be uploaded to JWA's website. Plans are in place to revisit questions and adapt for different stages in the pandemic. Promoted through local and national Jewish news, institutional digital communications channels and by the Council of American Jewish Museums.

• COVID-19 Oral History Project

  Focusing on Southern Appalachia, this project invited individuals to submit self-recorded testimonies from March 17 to June 30, 2020. Brief oral histories (under 25 minutes) seek to capture early impressions to document the community in which the interviewee lives and the impact of coronavirus. In the summer and fall, researchers will invite follow-up interviews to capture changes that have happened since the first interview.

• CoronaDiary

  This project invites volunteers of all ages to document and submit a record of their experiences over a length of several months during the global pandemic. Interest is in collecting handwritten notebooks; text, video, or audio diaries; social media posts; scholarly papers; or creative expressions including works of art and songs. Collected materials would be anonymized to protect participants and stored securely under password protection.

• StoryCorps Connect

  Adopting the popular StoryCorps model for an interview between two individuals, this platform allows for the capture of these interviews conducted remotely by video conference technology. StoryCorps Connect is a web-based program that provides the interface to record and submit these video interviews. Interviews are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Widely publicized, including numerous national news stories, social media, and online advertisements. Online material developed for partner organizations who work in K-12 education and with people with disabilities and the elderly to encourage broad use of this platform.

• Pandemic Journaling Project

  Utilizing a digital journaling platform, this project asks individuals to record their reflections at least once a week during the pandemic. Contributors provide demographic data and responses to questions about their experiences of the pandemic to accompany their anonymized journals. Journal entries can take the form of text, audio recordings, or a photograph accompanied by either. Entries can be kept private for use by researchers after 25 years or can be made public immediately by sharing on the project's website. Active in both English and Spanish.

• Help Us Make History

  The Help Us Make History project seeks to document the stories and experiences of the Yale community during the pandemic. This included an online survey for Yale undergraduates, collecting of public yale.edu websites, monthly prompts asking students, faculty and staff to provide text, video or photographic content documenting aspects of their personal, academic, and professional lives at Yale during the pandemic. Topics from prompts include photographs of study spaces, advice for students returning to campus, and what future students should know about life at Yale in 2020. Other areas of collecting include student works and faculty course content in pandemic-related classes and documentation of Yale parents. In addition, Help Us Make History has partnered with students to produce a podcast entitled "Say and Seal: Lives at Yale During COVID-19". Episodes include interviews with Yale students and faculty.

• Corona Guidance: Religious Norms for Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic

  David Friedenreich of Colby College is conducting the collecting and curating of Corona Guidance. Contributions include material from online sources that meet the following criteria: 1) Authored by religious authorities (mufti, rabbi, etc.) or organization in response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. 2) Offers practical guidance. 3) Draws on religious texts or values. 4) Is a written document (as opposed to a video or audio recording). The focus is on English-language materials but is not limited to particular geography; though lacking specific demographic scope there is an acknowledgment that it is not necessarily representative. The project is publicized through institutional and academic channels by posting texts of guidance documents and PDF captures of documents in original formats.

• Preaching Goes Viral

  Preaching Goes Viral is collecting digital recordings and transcriptions of materials related to religious life and practice: sermons; prayers; rituals and changes in worship; religious laws or guidelines about individual and communal practice; policy statements by organizations with scriptural, theological, moral, or other religious content; personal stories, blog posts, photographs, poems, and other expressions about religion & the crisis. Each submission is accompanied by information about the date and place of the material's creation and about the religious community in which it was created. Emphasis is on English-language material from the United States but includes some Hebrew and Yiddish materials and some from English-speaking countries abroad. Jewish focus on YUTorah.org and special projects on the Jewish community of Columbus, Ohio, and on Hillel campus groups. The project grew out of undergraduate courses on religion and on Jewish civilization. Student engagement will continue in the future with the hiring of summer interns for continued work and with analysis in fall courses in religious studies. Publicized through institutional communications and on social media by contributors.

• Series of essays and reports

  JPR has been publishing reports on the effects of COVID-19 on the Jewish community in the UK and Europe since June.

• Coping, Quarantine, COVID-19

  The goal of this virtual exhibition based in Israel is to explore the coping mechanisms, and more importantly, the anxieties and instabilities afflicted upon the artist during this time period. Submitted pieces should directly explore these themes in order to be considered for this virtual exhibition. All pieces deemed irrelevant to the theme, regardless of their quality, will not be considered.

• CV19Memorial

  This project is a platform for collective mourning, collecting testimonies about loss, care, suffering, and recovery. The online display encourages drawing connections between testimonies and exploring individual ones. There is a testimony submission form available in English and Spanish.

• COVID-19 Archive

  A project of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the COVID-19 Archive is collecting digital material to create a pandemic archive for the community. They’ll be sharing material and the narrative of collecting over the next few months, and enlisting the help and advice of their network of archives and experts to learn how to make an archive from scratch.

• Women Writing History: A Coronavirus Journaling Project

  Created to capture gendered experiences of the pandemic, this initiative solicits digital files of written, recorded, or artistic journals created in increments from women and gender non-binary individuals. Seeking contributions from those of any age and from all backgrounds, cultures, and socio-economic circumstances. Demographic data (age, location, occupation) is collected upon submission. In addition to collecting this material for future research, the museum's partnership with The New York Times creates the possibility that these materials will be used in contemporary publications.

• Collecting Community History: The West During COVID-19

  Working to help communities in the western United States identify items of significance connected to the Covid-19 pandemic and the international Black Lives Matter movement and protests. Accepting digital materials (written experiences, recipes, digital media, visual art, photograph) as well as photographs of objects for possible future donation. Museum has already begun posting material from this collecting initiative on its website.