From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America

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Postcard, A Happy New Year, 1910-1920, Hebrew Publishing Company, LoC
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An exhibition on Jewish life in America emphasizing the themes of accommodation, assertion, adaptation, and acculturation. The website features more than 200 illustrations, portraits, and images of books and documents from Library of Congress collections. The website offers an explanatory overview of the exhibition and four brief electronic exhibits focused that help to tell a part of the Jewish story in America from 1654 to the present. Some of the items highlighted by the exhibition include the first book printed in the English settlements of America, The Bay Psalm Book printed in 1640, the first published American Jewish sermon, and a hand-drawn plaque from c. 1942 with dual Hebrew prayers for Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. A small bibliography lists 10 books plus six books for children. The site provides an introduction to the Library of Congress collections and is useful for teaching about the history of Jewish life in America.

Jews in America: Our Story

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Image, Announcement for a Purim Ball..., New York, 1881, Jews in America
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The history of Jews in America from the 17th century to the present is explored in this website through essays, images, video presentations, and interactive timelines. Eight sections focus on particular time periods: 1654–1776; 1777–1829; 1830–1880; 1881–1919; 1920–1939; 1940–1948; 1949–1967; and 1968–present. Each section has short topical essays discussing the world events, politics, and daily life of the period, video and audio presentations, an image gallery, and books for further reading.

A number of sections also have "featured artifacts" that examine a particular cultural artifact, such as a Colonial-era book of prayers or a Civil War photo album, in greater detail. Each thumbnail is accompanied by a description and a full-sized image. The 590 images in the collection can also be viewed in a separate gallery.

Jewish American History on the Web

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Portrait, Israel Baer Kursheedt
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This privately maintained site offers a wide range of material on 19th-century Jewish history, including articles, documents, and religious essays. It makes available the text of The Occident and American Jewish Advocate from 1843 to 1850. The articles are searchable and visitors can browse the article indexes for each year. "Library" contains more than 60 essays and documents on Jews and Judaism, including an 1863 Catechism for Jewish Children. Additionally, the site offers the complete text of the 1845 Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine; more than 50 articles on Jews in the Civil War, including some first-hand accounts of events and extracts from personal diaries; and several articles on Jews in the Old West. There are more than 450 links to other sites on Jewish history, Jews, and Judaism. A site of interest to those studying the history of Judaism and the Jewish people in 19th-century America.

Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution

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Photo, Sonia Pressman Fuentes receiving EOCP Award, Jewish Women and. . .
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This exhibit explores the contributions of Jewish women in Feminism's "Second Wave" during which Jewish women helped work "to transform American society and Jewish life in America." It offers a collection of images, a timeline, and six thematic essays. The interactive timeline using the exhibit images allows the visitor to follow the role of Jewish women in the resurgence of the feminist movement from the 1960s through the end of the 20th century. The thematic essays—"Foremothers," "From Silence to Voice," "Setting the Feminist Agenda," "The Personal is Political," "Feminism is Judaism," and "Confronting Power"—combine images, audio clips, and statements from prominent Jewish feminists, as well as short biographies of the feminists. The visitor can search the entire collection of more than 90 objects and stories from Jewish feminists used in the essays or browse the collection by person, format, topic, or date. A useful resource for researching Jewish women or the history of the feminist movement.

A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life

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Oil on canvas, Mary Olivia Lucas Harby. . . , c. 1830, A Portion of the People
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This exhibit tells "the story of Southern Jewish settlers and their descendants from the late 1600s through the 21st century." It currently consists of two presentations, each with more than 50 pages presenting an image from the exhibit's collection with accompanying explanatory text. Images include portraits, maps, historical documents, photographs of Jewish ritual books and religious and cultural objects, paintings and photographs of synagogues, and photographs of Jewish businesses. "First Families" explores the period from the 1600s to the 1820s through more than 50 images and "This Happy Land" explores the antebellum and Civil War years through more than 90 images. (The presentation "Pledging Allegiance," recounting the story of Jewish migration to the South in the first half of the 20th century, is under construction.) Visitors can listen to six interviews featuring voices from the past (transcripts are available). Additionally, a photographic essay with more than 40 photographs, "Palmetto Jews" by Bill Aron, examines Jewish life in South Carolina over the past 50 years. There is no site search capability.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

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Photo, Fat Man plutonium implosion nuclear weapon, The Atomic Bomb. . .
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The site presents more than 90 primary source documents on the first use of nuclear weapons and the end of World War II. The documents are organized under eight topics that include background on the atomic project, target definition, debates on alternatives to first use and unconditional surrender, the Japanese search for Soviet mediation, the Trinity Test, the first nuclear strikes, and the problem of radiation poisoning. Additionally, the site's editor has provided commentary on some of the documents pointing out how they have been interpreted and a short introductory essay that explains the historical context of the documents and the questions they raise. A printable version of the briefing book is also available.

National Women's History Museum: Online Exhibits

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Poster, To Date Female Rebellion, 1895, Will R. Barnes, NYPL Digital Gallery
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Do not publish. Currently the exhibit presentation quality is not up to par. If that changes in the future, this node can be made public.

The National Women's History Museum is currently a web-based initiative, which plans to eventually become a Smithsonian affiliate. Their goal is to provide information on women's experience in and contribution to the entirety of U.S. history, moving past a narrow focus on suffrage.

At the time of writing, the website offers 20 digital exhibits. The available topics include Chinese American women, women in the Progressive Era, the creation of female political imagery and culture, pioneer female legislators (from every state), women in the Olympics, stories of motherhood, women spies, stamps featuring women, suffrage, women and education, the women of Jamestown, girls who had large-scale impact, women as film pioneers, African American women, women in the business of publication up through World War I, reform leaders, women in industrial labor positions, women during World War II, and women who have run for the office of President.

These exhibits offer short textual introductions to the subject at hand, enhanced with images and/or statistical data.

Pearl Harbor Attack Map

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Avenge Pearl Harbor, Our Bullets Will Do It, c.1942-3, NARA, Flickr Commons
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This interactive website on the attack on Pearl Harbor provides a chronological overview of the day's events. Each major event on the day's timeline is shown on a map of Hawaii, giving the events a visual place within the harbor geography and allowing site visitors to see where ships were in relationship to each other.

On the map, each major occurrence can be selected as the "full story." These individual full story pages provide a short textual overview of the event alongside a looping archival image and video slideshow. Clicking progresses through the slideshow for users interested in quickly revisiting an image after it has passed or who simply want to go through the slideshow at a faster pace. Many of the events also offer eyewitness quotes.

One of the most praiseworthy aspects of the site is that these quotes are not all from U.S. sailors and commanders. The voices selected include two women—a nurse and the daughter of a military man—and several Japanese airmen, submariners, and commanders. By providing voices from both sides of the attack, National Geographic avoids dehumanizing the Japanese through the absence of their own stories.

Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project

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Image, Witchcraft at Salem Village, 1876, Salem Witch Trials
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This website presents a valuable collection of resources for examining the Salem Witch trials of 1692. There are full-text versions of the three-volume, verbatim Salem Witch trial transcripts, an extensive 17th-century narrative of the trials, and full-text pamphlets and excerpts of sermons by Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, and Thomas Maule. The site also offers four full-text rare books written in the late 17th and early 18th centuries about the witchcraft scare. Descriptions and images of key players in the trials are presented as well.

Access is provided to more than 500 documents from the collections of the Essex County Court Archives and the Essex Institute Collection, and roughly 100 primary documents housed in other archives. There are also seven maps of Salem and nearby villages. Basic information on the history of Salem/Danvers is complemented by eight related images and a brief description of 14 historical sites in Danvers.

Marian Anderson: A Life in Song

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Portrait, Marion Anderson
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Created by the staff of the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania, this exhibit traces the life and musical career of African American contralto Marian Anderson. Anderson broke the race barrier when she came to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s. The materials are drawn from Anderson's personal papers, which she donated to the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. The exhibit is presented chronologically in 10 sections that explore Anderson's birth in Philadelphia, her education and musical training, and her career and humanitarian efforts toward improving African Americans' opportunities.

The site contains more than 30 audio and six video excerpts from performances and interviews, over 50 images, with approximately 100-word explanatory captions, illustrating Anderson's life and work. This exhibit is ideal for researching African American history and the history of the performing arts in America.