In Memoriam - Association of Jewish Libraries€¦ · Blumenfeld. Speaking of kid lit, several of the winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Awards will be joining us on Tuesday. Also

In Memoriam

Leah Adler z”l

1946 - 2019

AJL Board, Council and members mourn the loss of

Leah Adler, Head Librarian of Hebraica-Judaica at Yeshiva

University and a former AJL Board member.

May her memory be for a blessing and may her deeds continue to

influence others for years to come.

Our sincere condolences to her family and friends, to her YU

family, to all her colleagues in the library world and beyond.

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Letters………………………………………………………………………………...2 Conference Committee…………………………………………………………......5 Standing Ovations………………………………………………………………......6 AJL Information……………………………………………………………………...7 AJL Awards ………………………………………………………………...............13 Synagogues………………………………………………………………………….21 Kosher Restaurants…………………………………………………………………22 Schedule Grid…………………………………………………………………….... 23 Detailed Program…………………………………………………………………...27 Authors and Illustrators Luncheon………………………………………………...50 Tours………………………………………………………………………………….51 Speaker Biographies………………………………………………………………..52 Exhibitors………………………………………………………………………….....60 Advertisements………………………………………………………………………62

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Berukhim ha-ba`im le-Ir Melakhim! We are excited to welcome you to the 54th Annual Conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries in Woodland Hills, CA. We are pleased to offer you a wide variety of speakers, sessions and events. UCLA’s distinguished professor, Todd Presner will give the Feinstein Lecture on Mapping Jewish LA and the well-known author, illustrator and library lover Eugene Yelchin will present a talk about growing up a reader in the Soviet Union at our Tuesday Author Lunch. We will be honoring so many people at the conference. Elliot H. Gertel is receiving the Fanny Goldstein Award for outstanding service to AJL. The winner of this year’s Groner-Winkler winner for her dedication to Jewish children’s literature is Denise Blumenfeld. Speaking of kid lit, several of the winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Awards will be joining us on Tuesday. Also in attendance will be the winners of the Adult Fiction Award sponsored by Dan Wyman and the Reference Awards sponsored by Eric Chaim Kline. We invite you to explore the Los Angeles area. You will be surprised by the number of impressive libraries and museums we are blessed to have in the City of Angels. If you haven’t yet signed up for Wednesday’s trips to some of the highlights of these cultural treasures, check with Registration to see if there is still room to participate in these specially curated tours. We hope that you will return to your library informed and inspired.

Lisa Silverman Jackie Ben-Efraim

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Association of Jewish Libraries

Officers

President

Dina Herbert

Alexandria, VA

Past President

Amalia Warshenbrot

Charlotte, NC

Vice President/President-Elect

Kathleen Bloomfield

Seal Beach, CA

Vice President, Membership

Sharon Benamou

UCLA

Los Angeles, CA

Secretary

Nancy Sack

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Honolulu, HI

Treasurer

Kathy Bloch

Washington, DC

Research Libraries, Archives

& Special Collections

Division

President

Michelle Chesner

Columbia University

New York, NY

Vice President

Amalia S. Levi

Porters, St. James

Barbados

Synagogue, School &

Center Division

President

Emily Bergman

Temple Sinai of Glendale

Glendale, CA

Vice President

Ellen Share

Washington Hebrew

Congregation

Potomac, MD

Welcome to the 2019 AJL Conference! Our 54th conference is looking to be a great one, which

would not have been possible without the dedicated team of volunteers who are putting on a

fantastic conference. Many thanks should be given to co-chairs Jackie Ben-Efraim and Lisa

Silverman. They have made the work look effortless, which, as a previous conference co-chair, I

assure you is not. Special thanks go out to our SSC president, Emily Bergman, and RAS president,

Michelle Chesner, for making sure the programs are top notch.

This year for many of us has been a difficult one. The synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in

October, followed by another one in California at the end of Passover, have solidified our need as a

community to reach out to one another. Libraries and librarians, archives and archivists, and

everything in between, are essential for promoting tolerance and providing good resources. I am so

glad we are coming together as a community in beautiful Los Angeles to learn from and with each

other and bring back resources to our communities.

As you’ll notice, I’m not able to be present this year: in early May I had a baby and it’s just too

difficult for me to travel this year. I am disappointed to miss the conference in person and some of

the great sessions, like our keynote speaker, Eugene Yelchin. This year we are excited to bring

back the Feinstein Lecture, given by Todd Presner. The ever popular Sydney Taylor Book Awards

winner session, plus the receiving of these awards, is a great way to learn from authors of the

award-winning books. Similarly, I hope you all take advantage of meeting and hearing from the

fiction award winner and reference award winner.

With presenters and participants coming from all over North America, Israel, Europe, and South

America, this conference will be one you won’t forget.

Even though I can’t be here physically I’m here in spirit (and electronically!) and hope to connect

with everyone in Chicago.

Dina Herbert

AJL President

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National Conference Chair Lisa Silverman

Local Conference Chair Jackie Ben-Efraim

Programming Kathy Bloomfield, SSCPL President Michelle Chesner, RAS President Jackie Ben-Efraim Emily Bergman Lisa Silverman

Advertising and Exhibits Jacqueline Ben-Efraim Henry Hollander

Author Lunch Chair Susan Dubin

Judy Cohn Memorial Fund for Conference Support Lenore Bell Gail Shirazi

Program Book Elana Gensler

Registration Marcie Eskin

AJL Treasurer Holly Zimmerman

AJL Website Sheryl Stahl

AJL President Dina Herbert

Local Committee Catering Susan Rosner Registration Table Coordinator Ellen Cole, AJLSC President Moderator Coordinator Paul Miller Publicity Chloe Noland Hospitality Gayle Schnaid

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We are grateful to the following individuals and institutions for their generous support of AJL’s 54th Annual Conference

AJLSC Barry Wolfe

Dan Wyman Books Dr. Greta Silver

EBSCO Eric Chaim Kline

Jo Taylor Marshall Kar-Ben Publishing OPALS/Mediaflex

Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe Sperber Jewish Community Library of American Jewish University

Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium

We want to express our gratitude to conference book advertisers

and to the exhibitors for their support of AJL.

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Mission The Association of Jewish Libraries promotes Jewish literacy through enhancement of libraries and library resources and through leadership for the profession and practitioners of Judaica librarianship.

The Association fosters access to information, learning, teaching and research relating to Jews, Judaism, the Jewish experience, and Israel.

Goals

1. Maintain high professional standards for Judaica librarians and recruit qualified individuals into the profession.

2. Facilitate communication and exchange of information on a global scale. 3. Encourage quality publication in the field in all formats and media, print, digital, etc.;

stimulate publication of high quality children's literature. 4. Facilitate and encourage establishment of Judaica library collections. 5. Enhance information access for all through application of advanced technologies. 6. Publicize the organization and its activities in all relevant venues

a. Stimulate awareness of Judaica library services among the public at large b. Promote recognition of Judaica librarianship within the wider library profession c. Encourage recognition of Judaica library services by other organizations and related professions.

7. Ensure continuity of the Association through sound management, financial security, effective governance and a dedicated and active membership.

Divisions The Association of Jewish Libraries was created in 1965 as a result of the merger of two organizations. The Jewish Librarians Association, founded in 1947, concerned itself with collections of Judaica in academic, archival or research institutions. The Jewish Library Association, founded in 1962, concerned itself with collections in synagogue, school, and community center libraries, as well as other smaller libraries and media centers. Today, AJL continues to serve the needs and specialized interests of these groups through its two divisions:

The Research Libraries, Archives, and Special Collections Division (RAS) The Synagogue, School, Center and Public Libraries Division (SSCPL)

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Accreditation Committee The charge of the Accreditation Committee is to: 1) design accreditation instruments for Synagogue, School, Center and Public Libraries Division libraries; 2) review completed accreditation forms and award Basic and Advanced Status to those libraries who qualify; 3) advise and mentor libraries who request help reaching accreditation status; and 4) publicize the accreditation process in appropriate venues and publications.

Local Conference Committee The Local Conference Committee plans and coordinates all aspects of the annual conference, including: working with the national chair to locate a hotel, arranging for meals and entertainment, planning the programming, soliciting vendors for the book fair, recruiting volunteers, and coordinating with national committees - everything necessary for those attending to have an enlightening, educational, and enriching experience during the conference.

National Conference Committee

The organization-wide Conference Committee serves to advise, support, and assist the local convention chairs in planning and presenting the annual AJL Conference.

Conference Stipend Committee The Conference Stipend Committee reviews all applications requesting funds to attend the annual conference. The committee makes every effort to accommodate all in need of a stipend.

Groner-Wikler Scholarship The Groner-Wikler Scholarship, sponsored by KarBen Publishing, awards a scholarship for AJL conference attendance to an AJL member who demonstrates dedication to Jewish children's literature and Jewish library services.

International Liaison The charge of the International Liaison is to organize a panel or panels at international conferences that have a library or Jewish studies component. The committee makes contact with appropriate organizations sponsoring the conference and arranges sponsorship or joint sponsorship of one or more panels devoted to Judaica librarianship. The committee then solicits papers and decides on which papers to accept. The panel is then organized and the information is forwarded to the sponsoring organization. The committee maintains contact with the participants and publicizes the event.

Jewish Fiction Award The AJL Jewish Fiction Award Committee selects a work or works of fiction - novels and short story and flash fiction collections - with significant Jewish thematic content for an award. AJL gratefully acknowledges Dan Wyman Books for generously underwriting this award.

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Judaica Librarianship Committee AJL publishes an online peer-reviewed scholarly journal, providing a forum for scholarship on all theoretical or practical aspects of Jewish Studies librarianship. The editor and committee solicit articles, oversees the peer reviewing process, edits, and prepares the journal for publication.

Librarianship and Education Committee The Librarianship & Education Committee develops and promotes specialized courses (online and/or in person) for individuals interested in Judaica librarianship, both those in library school and those seeking continuing education.

Member Relations Committee The Member Relations Committee seeks to strengthen AJL by relationship-building and community-building among the membership. Member Relations also oversees AJL’s Mentoring program.

News and Reviews Committee AJL publishes a quarterly online journal sharing organizational news and reviews of new Judaic books and other materials. A large cadre of volunteer reviewers provides content, and members are welcome to submit articles in consultation with the general editor.

Public Relations Committee The Public Relations Committee's charge is to publicize the work of AJL via traditional and social media, assist committees in sharing their news, and assist AJL with networking and outreach efforts.

Publications Committee The Publications Committee oversees the distribution of AJL publications including monographs. It also seeks to publish new materials of interest to AJL members.

RAS Cataloging Committee The charge of the RAS Cataloging Committee is to act as a liaison with the Policy and Standards Division of the Library of Congress on issues affecting Judaica cataloging.

Reference and Bibliography Award Committee The Reference and Bibliography Award Committee is charged with annually selecting the winners of the Reference and Bibliography Award. Committee members review and evaluate books submitted by publishers for the awards.

Scholarship Committee The Scholarship Committee is responsible for sending announcements of the AJL scholarship competition to all accredited American and Canadian library schools; selecting the winner(s); publicizing the fund and announcing donations in the newsletter; sending notes of acknowledgement to those in whose honor, or family of those in whose memory, donations are made.

Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee is charged with annually selecting the winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award and with implementing the process by which the winners are selected, publicized, and presented. Committee members review and evaluate books submitted by publishers for the award.

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Sydney Taylor Manuscript Competition Committee The Sydney Taylor Manuscript Competition Committee is charged with annually selecting the winners of the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award and with implementing the process by which the winners are selected, publicized, and presented. Committee members review and evaluate manuscripts submitted by authors for the award.

AJL BOARD 2018-2020

President: Dina Herbert Past President: Amalia Warshenbrot VP/President Elect: Kathy Bloomfield VP Membership: Sharon Benamou VP Development: Rebecca Jefferson Treasurer: Holly Zimmerman Secretary: Nancy Sack RAS President: Michelle Chesner RAS Vice President: Amalia Levi SSCPL President: Emily Bergman SSCPL Vice President: Ellen Share

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Association of Jewish Libraries Anti-Harassment, Discrimination and Retaliation Policy

The Association of Jewish Libraries is dedicated to providing a safe and harassment-free environment for all of its conference attendees and has a zero-tolerance policy regarding harassment, intimidation, discrimination and retaliation. This includes inappropriate physical contact, unwelcome sexual attention, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination made on the basis of race, color, age, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, religion, class, body size, veteran status, marital/domestic partnership status, citizenship, religious observance, or any other marginalized identity. The AJL Anti-Harassment Policy is applicable to all AJL events and all AJL venues, including conferences, Chapter meetings, and online interactions. Code of Conduct All participants in AJL events and activities, including members, guests, exhibitors, presenters and volunteers, are required to comply with the following anti-harassment code of conduct. The AJL Anti-Harassment Policy prohibits harassment, including but not limited to the following behaviors:

• Inappropriate physical contact. • Unwelcome sexual attention. • Quid pro quo – sexual harassment that occurs when one in an authority position requests

sex or a sexual relationship in exchange for professional consideration or favors. • Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following. • Unwelcome photography or recording. • Abusive verbal or written comments, such as: teasing, slurs, epithets, threats, threats,

jokes, derogatory comments or drawings, or graphic comments about a person’s body. • Sustained disruption of talks or other events.

Harassment does not include respectful disagreement or reasonable and respectful critique made in good faith. AJL continues to welcome and appreciate presentation of controversial ideas, free speech, and creative artistic expression. AJL encourages members to hold one another accountable to the Code of Conduct and to take the perspectives of others seriously when a disagreement arises. Reporting Procedures Any person who believes there has been a violation of the AJL Anti-Harassment Policy can report the offense in one or all of the following ways:

• All AJL conferences will designate one or more Safety Team Members who will be available during the conference to provide a safe space for members to report an incident. The Safety Team Member(s) will be identified in the Program Book on the Anti-Harassment Policy page and introduced at the opening session of the conference. The Safety Team Member(s) will report directly to the President and/or Conference Chair in charge.

• AJL has a dedicated email address for reporting any incident of harassment. Anyone who chooses to report an incident can find the Anti-Harassment Report Form on the website (About > Anti-Harassment Policy) or use the following email: [email protected]. Reports can be filled out anonymously or with identifying information. Reports should include the substance of the complaint, date, and whenever possible, a list of witnesses or a reference to the relevant URLs, if the offense occurred online. This email address will be monitored at all times, including during AJL events. AJL

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will fully investigate all complaints and take whatever action is necessary and appropriate to prevent a recurrence. AJL will make every attempt to respond to a named complainant in a timely fashion.

Non-Retaliation The AJL Anti-Harassment Policy prohibits retaliation against a member of the AJL community for reporting harassment, intimidation or discrimination, or for participating in an investigation relating to any complaint made. Investigations and Sanctions AJL takes all allegations of harassment seriously. Every report will be investigated by a panel consisting of independent consultants specializing in issues of harassment. AJL will make every reasonable effort to conduct all investigations into allegations of harassment, intimidation, or discrimination in a manner that will protect the confidentiality of all parties. Notwithstanding the above, confidentiality is not absolute, and those with a legitimate business reason to know and be informed of the allegations will be so informed. Parties to the complaint are expected to treat the matter under investigation with discretion and respect the reputation of all parties involved. The results of the investigation and the recommendations of the panel will be reported to the members of the Board, who will determine the appropriate sanction, in conjunction with the panel and/or, if deemed necessary and appropriate, in consultation with an independent arbiter (i.e legal counsel, HR expert, etc.) Sanctions for AJL members, guests, exhibitors, presenters and volunteers may include any of the following:

• warning the party involved that the particular behavior is inappropriate and must be ceased;

• immediate removal from the event; • denial of access to AJL spaces and venues on a temporary or permanent basis; • withholding of a contracted honorarium; • prohibition from future speaking engagements; • removal from AJL Board or AJL Council, when appropriate; • termination of AJL membership, without refund; • prohibition from future AJL membership.

last update 4/30/2018

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THE 2019 SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARDS Sponsored by Jo Taylor Marshall

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Younger Readers

All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Paul Zelinsky

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Older Readers Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Teen Readers

What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper, illustrated by the author

Sydney Taylor Honor Books for Younger Readers Through the Window: Views of Marc Chagall’s Life by Barb Rosenstock

A Moon for Moe and Mo by Jane Breskin Zalben, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini

Sydney Taylor Honor Books for Older Readers All Three Stooges by Erica S. Perl

The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman

Sydney Taylor Honor Book for Teen Readers You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Committee Members

Rena Citrin, Shoshana Flax, Susan Kusel, Rebecca Levitan, Sylvie Shaffer, Marjorie Shuster, Rivka Yerushalmi

THE 2019 SYDNEY TAYLOR MANUSCRIPT AWARD Sponsored by Jo Taylor Marshall

A Corner of the World by Jessica Littman

Committee Members

Aileen Grossberg, Toby Harris, Heidi Rabinowitz, Jill Ratzan, Rachel Simon, Debbie Steinberg

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2019 JUDAICA REFERENCE AWARDS

sponsored by Dr. Greta Silver

Winner

Historical Atlas of Hasidism by Marcin Wodziński

Honorable Mention Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism

by Malka Z. Simkovitch

Committee Members

Amalia S. Levi, Hayim Gottschalk, Anne Knafl, Gabriel Mordoch, David Levy

2019 JEWISH FICTION AWARDS sponsored by Dan Wyman

Winner

Memento Park by Mark Sarvas

Honor Books The Cloister by James Carroll

The Fourth Corner of the World by Scott Nadelson

Committee Members Merrily Hart, Rachel Kamin, Clare Kinberg, Rosalind Reisner,

Laura Schutzman, Sheryl Stahl, Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

FANNY GOLDSTEIN AWARD

Elliot H.Gertel

Committee Members Michelle Chesner, Suzi Dubin, Jim Rosenbloom

AJL SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS Gail Robillard Hannah Srour

Committee Members

Tina Weiss, Sarah Barnard, Amanda Seigel

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LIBRARY ACCREDITATION

Basic Accreditation

Congregation Har Shalom, Congregation Har Shalom Library; Fort Collins, CO Judy Peterson, Library Director

The Louise D. Morton J. Macks Center for Jewish Education; Baltimore, MD

Jessica Fink, Librarian

Temple Israel of Long Beach, CA; Rabbi Harvey B. Franklin Library; Long Beach, CA Joan Leb, Chairman, Library Committee

Advanced Accreditation

Gray Academy of Jewish Education, Kaufman-Silverberg Library, Asper Jewish Community Campus; Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Ana Esterin, Head Librarian

North Shore Hebrew Academy High School Library; Great Neck, NY Aviva Adler, Director of Library and Library Services

Basic Accreditation – Renewal

Congregation Beth El Library; Bangor, ME Riva Berleant, Librarian

Haber House Senior Center Library; Brooklyn, NY

Elona Litvintchouk, Librarian

Israel Center of Conservative Judaism, Bella Mae & Harry Richter Memorial Library; Flushing, NY

Arlene Ratzabi, Librarian

Temple Emeth, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg Memorial Library; Teaneck, NJ Teri Binder and Marion Wolf, Library Co-Chairs

Temple Isaiah, Levine Library; Los Angeles, CA

Ellen Cole, Librarian

Temple Israel of Akron, The Victor Levin Resource Center; Akron, OH Rachel Armin Williams, Temple Librarian

Temple Rodef Shalom Library; Falls Church, VA

Susan Kusel, Librarian

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Advanced Accreditation – Renewal

B'nai Israel Congregation, B'nai Israel Blumberg-Zalis Family Library; Rockville, MD Jill Gendelman, Librarian

The Epstein School, The Goldstein Media Center; Sandy Springs, GA

Melissa Witte, Media Specialist

Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, FL, Feldman Children's Library & Howard Computer Lab; Boca Raton, FL

Heidi Rabinowitz, Director

Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, Ratner Media Center; Cleveland Heights, OH Nicole Katz, Librarian

North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, The Joseph and Mae Gray Cultural & Learning Center;

Highland Park, IL Rachel Kamin, Director

Shalom School; Sacramento, CA

Ben Pastcan, School Librarian

Temple Beth Sholom, Idelson Library; Sarasota, FL Debby Marshall, Library Coordinator

Accreditation Committee

Shaindy Kurzmann, Chair; Arlene Ratzabi, Cara Sagal, Bruchie Weinstein

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FANNY GOLDSTEIN MERIT AWARD

The Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) is happy to announce that Elliot H. Gertel is the 2019 Fanny Goldstein Merit Award recipient.

After nearly three decades as a librarian and most of the last twenty years as the first Irving M. Hermelin Curator of Judaica at the University of Michigan Graduate Library, including the last five years as the curator of the U-M Jewish Heritage Collection in Special Collections as well, Elliot retired on December 31, 2018.

As a member of AJL since 1990, Elliot has attended every AJL Annual Conference for the last 29 years and has presented sessions numerous times. He has held a number of positions in the Association including RAS President, and has served on the Executive Board from 2002-2008 and Council from 2002 through 2013. Since 2008, Elliot has represented AJL in the American Library Association as ALA Liaison.

An area of particular pride for Elliot in addition to his role as ALA Liaison involves cooperative sessions between AJL and ALA. As such, he was the originator, coordinator, and/or session chair for AJL-ALA joint programs. We are especially proud of his vigorous fight against several anti-Israel resolutions proposed by the Social Responsibilities Round Table within ALA.

Elliot has long been a champion of Yiddish language and culture and has taught the language at the University of Kentucky, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of Michigan, as well as synagogues in Lexington, Kentucky. Congratulations to Elliot on this well-deserved award. The Fanny Goldstein Merit Award Committee Michelle Chesner Suzi Dubin Jim Rosenbloom, chair

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GRONER-WIKLER SCHOLARSHIP

Denise Blumenfeld is this year’s recipient of the Groner-Wikler Scholarship. She works as a teacher and librarian at the Instituto Alberto Einstein day school in Panama City, Panama. She is an active Judaic role model for her students from pre-kindergarten to High School, full of passion to inspire reading and her love of teaching. She is part of the

school’s technology leadership team, always trying to share with her colleagues and students the smart and responsible usage of technology. She is studying for a master’s degree in Judaic studies and has a counseling degree, a Management of Non-Government Organizations degree, and a Judaic teacher studies degree. Her school’s Judaic director describes Denise as “a serious, devoted and responsible individual, as a competent and efficient professional, she serves to strength Jewish Literacy in the variety of ways also. She has spearheaded many different projects and initiatives in our school as well

as within the Jewish community at large, and she is a point of reference for so many teachers’ colleagues in the institute. In all of her endeavors she has demonstrated a great deal of integrity, responsibility and genuine care for everything that she does.” Her principal describes her as “a reliable librarian, a highly capable professional, and a valued member of our school community.”

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The Feinstein Lecture 2019 presented by

Todd Presner Curating and Publishing Digital Archives:

The Case of “Mapping Jewish Los Angeles”

Todd Presner is the Ross Professor of Germanic Language and Jewish Studies at UCLA. He is the chair of the Digital Humanities Program and Associate Dean of Digital Innovation. He directs the “Mapping Jewish LA” project through UCLA’s Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, where he was the director for 8 years (2010-2018). Through an ever-expanding series of collaborations with community partners throughout Los Angeles, the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies is creating a multimedia archive and a series of digital exhibitions called “Mapping Jewish Los Angeles” (http://mappingjewishla.org). The aim of the project is to “map” the diverse cultural and social histories of Jews in Los Angeles from the mid-19th century through the present. The project not only preserves the rich history of Jewish LA for generations to come, but also makes it accessible using cutting-edge digital technologies to stimulate new research, teaching, and community engagement throughout Los Angeles and beyond.

ABOUT THE FEINSTEIN LECTURE

In the mid-nineties, The Association of Jewish Libraries received a grant from the FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CULTURE (FJC) given by the Myer and Rosalind Feinstein Family to fund an annual lecture. From 1996 until about the 2010 conference, attendees enjoyed lectures on Judaic bibliography or librarianship sponsored by this fund. The FJC is no longer active, but it left AJL with monies to continue these lectures that will encourage and inspire Judaica librarians for the next ten years.

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DID YOU NOTICE THE MOUNTED POSTERS IN THE HOTEL FOYER CELEBRATING VINTAGE JEWISH FASHION?

You may be interested in how to get some for your library! They are offered free (digitally) from Beit HaTfutsot in Tel Aviv! The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot launched an initiative that offers Jewish institutions and organizations a selection of curated, ready-made photo displays. The displays are offered at no cost, with the intention of sharing Beit Hatfutsot’s vast collection of over 400,000 black and white images depicting Jewish history, heritage, and communal life across the globe. The Capsule Exhibits offer unique opportunities to enrich your communal space while engaging your members and visitors. The displays may also serve as launching pads for educational programs and crowd-sourced additions, inviting community members to submit their own family photos or artwork, creating a tapestry of meaningful moments. The Available Exhibits Include:

1. Celebrating Israel – Snapshots of the people behind a young state. A unique photo display in honor of Israel’s 70th anniversary

2. Hanukkah 3. Rosh HaShana 4. The Jewish Wedding - This exhibit showcases early to mid-20th century photographs of

Jewish weddings – an important part of the Jewish life cycle – from around the world, from marriage ceremonies beneath the chuppah (canopy) to commemorative family photos. With its illuminating diversity, this exhibit enables viewers to glimpse the ways in which a variety of Jewish communities and cultures celebrate their nuptials worldwide.

5. Vintage Jewish Fashion - These 20th century photographs depict traditional costumes and other ensembles from Jewish communities throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Eretz Israel and beyond. Showcased are portrait and group photos, master craftwork including embroidery and jewelry, European Jewish school and sport uniforms, festive dress, early Eretz Israel urban and labor clothing and a famous Israeli fashion brand.

6. The Roots of the Start-Up Nation - Brings together photographs of Israeli industries from the first half of the 20thcentury, including the citrus and textile industries of the 1920’s, those industries that arose out of the immigration wave of the 1930’s, and industries bolstered by governmental intervention in the 1950’s labor market.

7. Is it Kosher? - A selection of photographs of cooking, eating & selling Jewish food. 8. Jewish Simchas - Various Jewish celebrations such as Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in a wide

variety of communities 9. Jewish Sport - Jewish sports events and Jewish sports teams in the 1920’s-1980’s. 10. Passover - The various ways in which the holiday is celebrated and commemorated in

communities across the globe.

To find out more information, contact Program Manager Yaara Litwin at Beit HaTfutsot: [email protected] https://www.bh.org.il/education/capsule-exhibits-beit-hatfutsot/

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Beit Avraham Sefaradic Community Synagogue (1.3 miles from hotel) 5726 Fallbrook Ave, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 992-5217 beitavrahamtemple.org Shacharit: Sunday 7 a.m./ M-F 6:30 a.m./ Shabbat 8 a.m. Mincha/Ma’ariv: ½ hour before sunset every day

Beit Hamidrash of Woodland Hills (Orthodox) (1.3 miles from hotel) 5850 Fallbrook Avenue, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 999-2059 beithamidrash.org Shacharit: M,TH 6:30 a.m. / TU,W,F 6:45 a.m. / Shabbat 8:45 a.m. / Sunday 8 a.m. Mincha/Ma’ariv: 20 minutes before sunset Temple Kol Tikvah (Reform) (2.5 miles from hotel) 20400 Ventura Blvd, Woodland Hills, CA 91364 (818) 348-0670 Koltikvah.org Temple Aliyah (Conservative) (3.9 miles from hotel) 6025 Valley Cir Blvd, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 346-3545 www.templealiyah.org Shacharit: Daily minyan 7:15 a.m. / Shabbat 9:15 a.m. Shomrei Torah Synagogue (Conservative) (4.9 miles from hotel) 7353 Valley Circle Boulevard West Hills, CA 91304 (818) 854-7690 stsonline.org Shacharit: M-F 8 a.m. / 9 a.m. Sunday Ma’ariv: M-Th 7:30 p.m. / Shabbat morning 9 a.m. Chabad of West Hills (4.2 miles from hotel) 6820 Valley Cir Blvd, West Hills, CA 91307 (818) 337-4544 www.chabadofwesthills.com Shabbat morning 10 a.m.

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Darna Mediterranean Cuisine (Meat) RCC (818) 914-4188 (3 miles from hotel) 19737 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills www.darnamediterraneancuisine.com Cheerful counter-service eatery dispensing kosher versions of classic Israeli & Moroccan dishes Pacific Kosher Express (Dairy) Kehilla (818) 564-4385 (3 miles from hotel) 19907 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills www.pacifickosherexpress.com Authentic Israeli food Tel Aviv Fish Grill RCC (818) 774-9400 (4.1 miles from hotel) 19014 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana www.telaviv-fishgrill.com Fish dishes and new breakfast menu in a contemporary décor. Street Café by Aroma (Dairy) RCC (818) 757-0477 (5.5 miles from hotel) 18047 Ventura Blvd., Encino www.streetcafebyaroma.com Mediterranean cuisine Chicken Star (Meat) RCC (310) 414-7580 (6.5 miles from hotel) 17930 Ventura Blvd., Encino chickenstarencino.com Israeli-Asian Fusion cuisine Tel Aviv Grill (Meat) RCC (818) 774-9400 (7 miles from hotel)) 17201 Ventura Blvd., Encino Falafels, shawarma & burgers are on the menu at this kosher counter serve with a convivial ambiance. Tel Aviv Grill (Meat) RCC (3 miles from hotel)) 23335 Mulholland Drive, Woodland Hills

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Sunday, June 16

2:30-5:00 p.m. Board Meeting Ventura Room

5:15-7:15 p.m. Council Meeting (includes dinner) Ventura Room

7:30-10:00 p.m. Movie: Who Will Write Our History? Hidden Hills Room

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Monday, June 17

8:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. REGISTRATION Grand Foyer

8:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m.

Bibliographer’s Meeting Salon AB

OCLC Update Salon GH

10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Judaica Librarianship Board Salon AB

Newcomers Welcome Salon CD

RAS Cataloging Committee Salon GH

Sydney Taylor Book Awards Committee

Salon IJ

11:00 a.m.-6:45 p.m.

EXHIBITS Salon EF

12:00-1:30 p.m.

LUNCH Salon EF Welcome and Fanny Goldstein Award

Rooms 1A

Salon AB 1B

Salon CD 1C

Salon GH 1D

Salon IJ

2:00-3:30 p.m. Archives/Collections Lithuania New Israeli Literature

in Translation Youth Literature and Teaching

Rooms 2A

Salon AB 2B

Salon CD 2C

Salon GH 2D

Salon IJ

3:45-5:15 p.m. Genealogy Jewish Music Research

Across Archives and Libraries

Looking at International

Youth Literature

Archival Outreach and Digital Tools

Rooms

3A Salon AB

3B Salon CD

3C Salon GH

3D Salon IJ

5:30-6:30 p.m.

Shoah Foundation Archives and Data

Live Podcast Remembering the Past and Preserving for the Future

Digital Resources Workshop

6:30 p.m. Dinner on Your Own

8:30 p.m. Russel Neiss: Bonus Session Salon IJ

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Tuesday, June 18

7:30-8:45 a.m. BREAKFAST Salon EF

8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

EXHIBITS Salon EF

9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

REGISTRATION Grand Foyer

Rooms 4A Salon AB

4B Salon CD

4C Salon GH

4D Salon IJ

9:00-10:30 a.m. Holocaust/Collections Best New Fiction for Adult Readers

Digitization Information Literacy

10:45-11:30 a.m.

RAS Meeting Salon CD

SSC Meeting Salon GH Accreditation Awards

11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

General Membership Meeting Salon CD

12:30-2:30 p.m. AUTHOR’S LUNCHEON Salon EF Keynote Speaker: Eugene Yelchin

Rooms 5A Salon AB

5B Salon CD

5C Salon GH

2:45-4:15 p.m. LC’s IJ Section Update

Meet the Sydney Taylor Book Award Winners

Jewish Texts and Literature

Rooms 6A Salon AB

6B Salon CD

6C Salon GH

6D Salon IJ

4:30-6:00 p.m. Collections from Near and Far

A Presentation by Members of the Sydney

Taylor Book Award Committee

Persian Literature and Publishing

Important Persons and Their Collections

6:15-8:30 p.m. AWARDS DINNER Salon EF

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Wednesday, June 19

7:30-8:45 a.m. BREAKFAST Salon EF

AJL Fiction Award Committee hosts an informal discussion of the 2019 award winner, Memento Park, at 8:00 a.m. in the ballroom

9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

REGISTRATION Grand Foyer

Rooms 7A Salon AB

7B Salon CD

7C Salon GH

7D Salon IJ

9:00-10:30 a.m. Bible Collections General Interest SSCPL Roundtable Cataloging

10:30-11:00 a.m.

Board buses to AJU

Tours 8A

8B

8C

8D

11:45 a.m.-12:30 pm

Tour starting in Ostrow & Sperber Library

Tour starting in Sculpture Garden

Tour starting in Rare Book Room

Tour starting in Mikveh

12:30-2:15 p.m. LUNCH AJU Feinstein Lecture: Todd Presner

2:30-5:30 p.m. Tours to Skirball, Getty and UCLA Libraries

6:30 p.m. Conference Recap (for conference planners)

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SUNDAY, JUNE 16 2:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Board Meeting Ventura Room 5:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m. Council Meeting Ventura Room 7:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. Movie: Who Will Write Our History? Hidden Hills Room Roberta Grossman in conversation with Michael Berenbaum

MONDAY, JUNE 17 8:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Registration Grand Foyer 8:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m. Bibliographer’s Meeting Salon AB

OCLC Update Salon GH

10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Judaica Librarianship Editorial Board Salon AB Newcomers Welcome Salon CD RAS Cataloging Committee Salon GH Sydney Taylor Book Awards Committee Salon IJ

11:00 a.m.-6:45 p.m. Exhibits Open Salon EF

12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m. Lunch Salon EF Welcome and Fanny Goldstein Award

2:00 p.m.- 3:30 p.m. Session 1

Session 1A Salon AB

ARCHIVES/COLLECTIONS Moderator: Lital Beer

Update from NLI Ahava Cohen Rock out with the National Library of Israel (NLI) and our new music streaming application, Shiri. Or browse our catalog from anywhere in the world and click on our links for instant free access to tens of thousands of Judaic resources, both old and new. NLI has been celebrating 450 years of the Hebrew book and has teamed up with a variety of organizations within Israel and abroad to increase public access to our collections and to catalog exciting new collections. Also on our schedule this year has been work with the Wikimedia Foundation to create Wikipedia articles and add metadata to Wikidata, planning our migration from the ALEPH ILS to Alma, service to librarians through professional development courses, continuing work on the English text of RDA, and leadership in the international cataloging community.

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Non-Kosher Shelves: An Insight into the Literary Offerings of Jewish Public Libraries in Interwar Poland Monika Biesaga Nowadays, when many Jewish book collections and libraries from the interwar period no longer exist, printed catalogues are the only remaining sources which enable us to reconstruct their contents and make it possible to study reading preferences of their founders, owners and users. In her presentation, Monika will analyze the content of a few survived printed catalogues of Jewish public libraries in Poland and present the literary offer they had for a Jewish reader.

German-Jewish Exiles in Los Angeles: Promoting the Legacy of Lion Feuchtwanger and Jewish Emigres at USC in the 21st Century Marje Schuetze-Coburn and Michaela Ullman The Feuchtwanger Memorial Library (FML) at USC has a long history and documents the legacy of novelist Lion Feuchtwanger and other Jewish and German-speaking exiles in Los Angeles. The collection is not only heavily used by local and international researchers, but has also seen a steady increase in its use by students, thanks to newly developed instruction and outreach efforts. In the first part of the presentation, Marje Schuetze-Coburn will discuss Feuchtwanger’s path into exile, shine light on this rich archival and rare book collection and cover the fate of his three libraries, including his final library now held at USC and Villa Aurora. Schuetze-Coburn will also discuss the FML’s role to develop USC Libraries’ strong focus on Exile Studies as well as Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In the second part of the presentation, Michaela Ullmann will talk about the relevance of the collection for teaching and learning at USC. She will present case studies from a variety of classes she has worked with to document how she brings students into contact with these rich historical resources using hands-on active learning assignments and digital humanities projects. Finally, Ullmann will review a variety of outreach efforts that she and Schuetze-Coburn have conducted to actively engage USC’s students and faculty with the FML and other Exile Studies-related collections at USC.

Session 1B Salon CD

LITHUANIA Moderator: Haim Gottschalk

Lost and Found: Traces of Lithuanian Jewish Cultural Dialog Lara Lempert In the middle of the 1930s in independent Lithuania, representatives of Lithuanian and Jewish intelligentsia and professionals began to develop mutual interest and initiated a number of common educational and cultural projects. This process was brutally terminated by the Holocaust, and its documentation and representations are rare and precious. This paper will present main tendencies of those intercultural contacts as they are seen through documents from Lithuania’s depositories.

Abba Balosher's Library as a Model of Pre-War Lithuanian Institutions Olga Potap In pre-World War II Kaunas, Abba Balosher (1869-1944), an intellectual and a scholar, managed a private library and distributed books in eight languages. He kept contacts with many book dealers and publishing houses overseas which make his library unique and expendable. The spirit

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of Balosher’s library has matched the sense of the independent Lithuanian democratic society – intellectual and open-minded, not limited by languages and geographical borders. Efforts were made to save Balosher’s library during the Nazi occupation. More than 9,000 volumes were sent to the National Library of Lithuania. However, the most valuable Hebrew books and manuscripts were prepared for transport to Germany, while the rest of Yiddish and Hebrew books were burned or sent to the paper mill. Until last year, the librarians at the National Library of Lithuanua and Balosher’s relatives were confident that all Jewish books from Balosher’s library were destroyed during the Nazi occupation. In 2017, the librarians at the National Library of Lithuania found a collection of Yiddish and Hebrew books in some storage facilities. The presentation will provide information about this finding and will also emphasize the attempts taken by the Lithuanian intellectuals to save the Jewish library.

Vilnius: In Search of Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania Vadim Sapozhnikov Mr. Sapozhnikov will discuss the complexities of translating a soon to be published English translation of a book that includes 23 pedestrian routes around the city of Vilnius and its suburbs tracing the often-tragic history of local Jewish community. These challenges are comparable to many of the issues librarians face when cataloging resources in multiple languages. Some of the challenges faced in creating this translation were the multitude of sources in a variety of languages: old documents, governmental archives, photographs, advertisements, ticket stubs, lithographic prints and architectural drawings. Relatively recently declassified Soviet archive documents, as well as the sizeable portion of the book that deals with the Holocaust in excruciating detail, placed additional psychological demands and responsibility on the translator. In addition, Vilnius has undergone several political changes throughout its history which often changed the official language. In order to be useful, it was important for this volume to strictly adhere to names used by the official language at a specific time in history.

Session 1C Salon GH

NEW ISRAELI LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION Moderator: Kathy Bloomfield

Lost (and Found) in Translation: New Israeli Literature in English Rachel Kamin It is an established fact in the literary world that Americans just aren’t that motivated to read fiction in translation. Only three percent of all books published in the United States each year are in translation, but the small number of books being translated from Hebrew has been steadily increasing. Rachel will discuss some of these new books that are now available to those of us who are not quite fluent enough to read them in their original Hebrew, as well as trends in Israeli literature and books written in English by native Hebrew speakers.

Rachel and Yalta: New Perspectives on Talmudic Women Tamar Duvdevani Discussed during this talk will be two relatively new Israeli novels, portraying female Talmudic characters:

• Yochi Brandes's Ha-Pardes Shel Akiva (translated into English as: The Orchard) • Ruhama Weiss's Yalta (currently in the process of being translated into English)

These books, written from the point of view of the female main characters, flesh out these Talmudic personalities, giving them a voice and a back story, adding depth to the Talmudic text.

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The books offer a new interpretation of Talmudic literature, focusing on the experiences of women and making them the heroes not only of their own story, but also of the Jewish people.

Session 1D Salon IJ

YOUTH LITERATURE AND TEACHING Moderator: Anjelica Ruiz

Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World through Children’s Books Margo Tanenbaum We live in an often disturbing and frightening world - one where natural disasters, bullying, violence, and intolerance seem to be all around us. Ms. Tanenbaum will use the traditional Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam to highlight recent releases, particularly picture books, which focus on social justice issues, encouraging kindness and creating a better world. She will describe how she put these ideas into practice through a social justice book club for families. In addition, she will highlight web resources for keeping up to date on new titles, as well as free curriculum resources helpful for the classroom. A book list and resource list will be provided to all participants.

Teaching the Holocaust through the Arts Leora Raikin The purpose of the David Labkovski Project is to educate through the art of David Labkovski. By engaging viewers with his paintings and sketches, students learn lessons of life, survival, tolerance, acceptance, and the importance of bearing witness to history. Ms. Raikin will provide examples of how Holocaust materials, either those of David Labkovski, or items already in Judaica libraries, can be used to inspire middle and high school students to produce their own works of art or creative writing to then share with their local community or online.

Oy Vey and Excelsior! Jewish Representation and Moral Lessons in Graphic Novels and Comics Eli Lieberman This presentation will focus on graphic novels and comic books with characters who are identifiably Jewish. Mr. Lieberman will discuss how Haredi and other such groups utilize comic books and graphic novels to impart religious and moral lessons, as well as providing an alternative to secular comic books and culture. With the recent passing of Stan Lee, co-creator of many of the most well-known superheroes and superhero teams for Marvel Comics, there has been an increased focus on the history and use of graphic novels and comics in the general culture. Examples of Jewish characters in these materials include Shaloman by Al Weisner, as well as characters from the Marvel Comics universe who have markedly Jewish identities, such as Ben Grimm aka The Thing, Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat, Magneto, and others. The benefits of collecting this genre, especially for adolescents, in Jewish school libraries will also be discussed.

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3:45 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. Session 2

Session 2A Salon AB

GENEALOGY Moderator: Ellen Share

Documenting the Vilna Ghetto Library Judy Baston Vilna – known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania – had a strong cultural tradition before the Shoah that flourished even after the Vilna Ghetto was established in 1941. One of the most important cultural institutions in the Ghetto was the Vilna Ghetto Library. In many ways, The Vilna Ghetto was unique – it was the only ghetto with a central, officially sanctioned library that functioned during the Shoah.

Documentation from the Vilna Ghetto Library has survived and includes lists of readers in the Library, lists of workers in the Library and even a list of readers who did not return books to the Library. Most of these lists are in the Lithuanian State Central Archive (LCVA) in Vilnius. One such list, “List of Readers with a Subscription to the Vilna Ghetto Library, Arranged in Alphabetical Order,” includes names and addresses of 4,401 Vilna Ghetto residents. This list is now publicly searchable by surname at https://www.litvaksig.org/all-lithuania-database.

Although none of the lists of Vilna Ghetto Library patrons appear to include the names of the particular books that specific patrons took out of the Library, several documents from Vilna Ghetto librarians provide insight into which kinds of books were preferred by which sorts of Ghetto patrons.

Genealogical Resources in Yeshiva University’s Special Collection Shuli Berger This illustrated lecture will provide an overview of archival collections and manuscripts held by Yeshiva University Library's Special Collections relating to German, Hungarian and American genealogical primary research sources, dating primarily from the mid-eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The lecture will also include background information on the collections as well as specific examples of items in the collections. There will be a brief explanation of how to locate genealogical resources in the Yeshiva University’s online catalog and archival finding aids.

Genealogical Research: In Memory There is Redemption" (Bi’Zikranot yesh ha-geulah) Bringing to Light Family Genealogical Research as a Redemptive Journey David Levy This genealogical research describes the methods and strategies to uncover past history of various members of the Gluskin family back thirteen generations and place this account in its historical context, as well as the importance of genealogical research. As well as the uncovering of an elite rabbinic history, this study brings to center stage from the marginal material on matriarchal histories. The testimony is peppered with primary sources including interviews, photos, genealogical trees, letters, Hespadim, Hashkamot, pinkasim, maps, the historic Jewish press and current Israeli newspapers, memoirs, public records, oral histories, tombstone inscriptions, family photos, original poems by family members, and demographic studies. Many secondary sources such as Eleh Ezkarah, Minsk yizkor books, academic articles, etc. are drawn upon. The research notes some individuals who made major impacts in their Jewish community, Judaism, cultural history at large, Zionism and life in Israel for those fortunate to get out of the

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Soviet Union in Zionist Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. We trace censorship and persecution under Communist Russia and how this affected family under the surveillance of the KGB. The work reveals the misirat nefesh of those who sacrificed as a form of Kiddush ha-Shem, in trying times. The work implores us to aspire to live by the light of the examples of these noble ancestors whose holy souls sparks shine as glistening "names" in Gan Eden. We cannot know where we are going unless we know "where we have walked" in generations before us. The book is an attempt to turn to the past to guide us into the future, to make us better persons, seeking wisdom from the elders, as parasha Hazinu enjoins: ינּו ְשנֹות ֹדר-ָוֹדר; ֶניָך ְויֹאְמרּו ָלך ְזֹכר ְימֹות עֹוָלם, בִּ ְדָך, ְזקֵּ יָך ְוַיגֵּ ְשַאל ָאבִּ

Session 2B Salon CD

JEWISH MUSIC RESEARCH ACROSS ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES Moderator: Rachel Leket-Mor

From Mickey to Lowell: Creation of a Center for the Study and Preservation of Jewish Music Sharon Benamou, Mark Kligman, Matthew Vest In 2014, Dr. Mark Kligman was hired as the first Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music at UCLA. This has attracted students to UCLA as a center for Jewish music scholarship. The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music received a gift to establish the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music in order to give attention to American Jewish music as an area of research and study. The UCLA Libraries are coordinating with the archive and across units to develop a shared collection development plan, programming and research.

Just Like a Dream: Finding Jennie Goldstein's Voice in the Archives Amanda Seigel With her distinctive voice and style, the Yiddish actress, singer, and lyricist Jennie Goldstein (1896-1961) performed, recorded and published dozens of songs during her nearly sixty-year career. Goldstein's musical output reflects the multiple roles she played, on and off-stage, and the changing cultural landscape of (Yiddish) America. What research methods can we use to discover musical (and other) sources from Goldstein's work?

The Struggle is Reel: Jewish Cassettes in the Recorded Sound Archive at Florida Atlantic University Daniel Scheide Home taping couldn't kill music when there were halakhic warnings on the insert. As audio cassettes are making a comeback, the Recorded Sound Archive at FAU is preserving and cataloging recordings found nowhere else, unearthing hidden gems not available in other formats. Orthodox pop parodies, Israeli pre-Eurovision Contest collections and cantorial rarities are among the highlights presented by Daniel Scheide in his inimitable style.

Session 2C Salon GH

LOOKING AT INTERNATIONAL YOUTH LITERATURE Moderator: Joana Sussman

Literature or Propaganda? How They Write About the Arab Israeli Conflict Marjorie Gann Despite its complexity, the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict is a surprisingly popular theme in contemporary children’s fiction and fictionalized memoirs. This presentation will focus on books

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written in English by American, Canadian and British authors, as well as on translations from Hebrew and from bilingual Arabic-Hebrew picture books from Israel. It will examine this literature from both political and literary perspectives, comparing how authors from different interest groups present the history and lives of Jews and Arabs in Israel and the West Bank. Drawing on personal interviews with several authors, Marjorie will explore their goals in addressing this highly controversial topic in books for young readers. This paper will also examine the sources authors consulted or ignored in their research into the daily lives of the residents of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Marjorie will situate this wave of political literature within a comparative context, comparing these books with classics of the American Civil Rights Movement. Finally, she will explore the literary quality of these highly political books. The discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of these novels should help school and synagogue librarians choose appropriate novels on the Middle East conflict for middle grade and high school students.

What’s New in Award-Winning Translated Children’s Books with Jewish Content Annette Goldsmith At the 2012 AJL Conference, Annette identified and discussed children’s books with significant Jewish content among winners of the two most important U.S. awards for translated books for youth, the Mildred L. Batchelder Award and the Outstanding International Books List. In the last few years there has been increased activity in publishing and promoting translations, including the appearance of the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI), a group of translators, librarians, teachers, etc. that provides librarians with collection development information and programming ideas for world literature. In 2018, GLLI introduced a new award, the Translated YA Book Prize - another award to check for Jewish content. With the findings from her 2012 session as a point of departure, Annette will provide an update on the children’s literature translation scene today, drawing on her dissertation research into decision making by children’s book editors in choosing books from other countries to translate into English for the U.S. market. She will identify award-winning translations with significant Jewish content published from 2013-2018 and facilitate hands-on activities for using them.

Session 2D Salon IJ

ARCHIVAL OUTREACH AND DIGITAL TOOLS Moderator: Rebecca Levitan

Using Community-Based Archives for Diversifying the Historical Record Amalia S. Levi Many of the material that document the lives of Jewish communities in the US and abroad are not found in academic libraries or mainstream archival repositories, but in community, synagogue and personal archives. These community-based archives have often little to no inventories or finding aids and are curated with severely restricted budgets and staff. The result is that they remain invisible and their full potential is not taken advantage of. Simple steps, both analogue as well as digital, can aid Jewish community-based archives increase their visibility, diversify the historical record, and enhance programming, education, outreach and fundraising. In this workshop, we will explore practical ways to showcase and use your institution’s or community’s archival collections. The workshop will consist of two parts: A. Archival outreach and digital tools Learn of various methods to promote and facilitate the use of your community archival collections. You will also learn of digital tools, available for free or low cost, that can help you use collections in different ways. Such tools can vary in complexity from ones that require no or very little technical skills to more advanced digital sophistication.

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B. Build your own exhibit Do you want to start showing your institution’s collection online? Participants will be introduced to Omeka, a free tool that allows individuals and institutions to put in place a content management system for their collections, build different exhibits and display them on the web. You will have the chance to try out the tool and build a small exhibit. Requirements: Wi-fi enabled laptop. Bring your own digitized items or use the ones provided. Feel free to contact the workshop instructor for any clarifications ([email protected]).

5:30 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Session 3

Session 3A Salon AB

SHOAH FOUNDATION ARCHIVES AND DATA Moderator: Sheryl Stahl

Indexing and Searching Testimony in USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive Sandra Joy Aguilar In this hands-on demo, Sandra will show conference attendees the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive database which contains more than 50,000 testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. She will also demonstrate how the database is accessed by ProQuest subscribers at academic institutions worldwide and the special research features of that interface.

Spreadsheet Madness: Mapping Data from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive to MARC Daryn Eller The 50,000-plus audiovisual testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive each have significant metadata, but it is organized in ways unique to the Institute and not compatible with Library of Congress standards. When tasked with creating library records for the archive, the challenge was to not only map the individualized data behind each testimony to MARC, but - since viewing each testimony for content would be impossible - to come up with uniform subject headings and summaries that could be used across experience groups. The presentation will take conference attendees through the process, familiarize them with the tools used, and explain how it was attempted to make the records less generic by adding geographical terms specific to each testimony. Also covered will be the additional challenge of getting the MARC records into USC’s Primo/Alma catalog and the collaboration with USC librarians. Is it a good idea to create such generic records? Will it help researchers find useful resources or clutter up their searches?

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Session 3B Salon CD

LIVE PODCAST Moderator: Joana Sussman

The Book of Life Live Show: "Boys and Girls or Monkeys and Raccoons?" Heidi Rabinowitz, Joni Sussman and Barney Saltzberg

Podcast live shows are all the rage these days! In this session, join host Heidi Rabinowitz as she creates a podcast episode for The Book of Life before your very eyes. Guest Joni Sussman of Kar-Ben Publishing and author/illustrator Barney Saltzberg will discuss how they decide on an "art profile" for picture books - i.e. whether to use humans or animals, the ethnic diversity of the characters, any special needs portrayed, etc. Audience participation will be encouraged.

Since 2005, The Book of Life has been interviewing creators of Jewish books, music, film and websites. The Book of Life is closely affiliated with AJL. Many interviews take place during the annual conference, and the podcast has a tradition of offering exclusive interviews with the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee chair to reveal the winning titles. In this session, attendees will learn a little history about the show and record a live interview that will ultimately become an episode online.

Session 3C Salon GH

REMEMBERING THE PAST AND PRESERVING FOR THE FUTURE Moderator: Jasmin Shinohara

Vienna University Library’s Collection of Old Hebrew Prints Monika Schreiber Vienna University Library owns a collection of roughly 1,200 Old Hebrew prints, produced and circulated all over Europe over a period of more than 400 years, starting with the late fifteenth century. All of them have comprehensive bibliographic and item records in ALMA, which are in the process of being incorporated into “Footprints,” a database on Jewish book history managed at Columbia University. Using showcase examples from the Vienna collection, this talk will address the subject of early modern academic collection building in the fields of Hebrew, the Bible and Judaism. The earlier Jewish and Christian repositories consolidated in the Vienna collection will be discussed in connection with questions concerning the work of Christian Hebraists who edited and authored books in Hebrew. The second part of the presentation will describe the digital processing of the ALMA records required for their inclusion into the “Footprints” database and the creation of a linked data graph designed to support research questions formulated using a digital humanities approach.

Dr. Lou Shub: A Pioneer Judaica Librarian in Sunny Southern California Haim Gottschalk Dr. Lou Shub was the first director of the library at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, CA. He was also a pioneer in Judaica librarianship in Southern California. This presentation will present the life of Dr. Lou Shub and highlight his accomplishments in developing the collection at the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University) and his contributions to librarianship in general.

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Session 3D Salon IJ

DIGITAL RESOURCES WORKSHOP Moderator: Amalia Warshenbrot

Choose Your Own Torah Adventure with Sefaria Russel Neiss Sefaria is deeply committed to the democratization of Jewish knowledge and helping individuals access Jewish resources in order to help promote Jewish literacy. The digitized texts and links are equally beloved by teachers and librarians in Jewish supplemental and day schools, and those engaged in text-centered Jewish digital humanities projects. In this hands-on session, participants will get a chance to play and explore Sefaria's core library along with some of its lesser known functions and features including visualizations, lexicons, contextualized topics, and other third party tools designed using API and texts. Participants will leave the session being proficient users of Sefaria and will emerge having begun the process of creating materials to use in their work. 6:30 p.m. Dinner on Your Own

8:30 p.m. Bonus Session Salon IJ

“Twitter Workshop”: Build Your Own Digital Humanities Twitter Bot {no coding experience required} Russel Neiss and Michelle Chesner

You may have heard about those "twitter bots" that are to blame for sowing discord and false information during the 2016 election. They're small automated programs that usually spam users or scrape data from pages, and engage in other nefarious activities. But did you know that there are many creative bots that help contribute to the broader culture of the internet, digital humanities, and yes, even Jewish librarianship? Join us at this informal gathering with a link to your favorite digital Judaica collection, and leave (hopefully) having created a twitter bot that showcases it to the world.

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TUESDAY, JUNE 18 7:30 a.m.-8:45 a.m. Breakfast Salon EF 8:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Exhibits Salon EF 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Registration Grand Foyer

9:00 a.m.- 10:30 a.m. Session 4

Session 4A Salon AB

HOLOCAUST/COLLECTIONS Moderator: Marlene Schiffman

Using Yad Vashem's Databases in Reconstructing Life Histories of Holocaust Victims Lital Beer Since its very beginning, Yad Vashem has been collecting documentation about the Holocaust from various sources and in a variety of topics, original or copy. A main goal has been the documentation and commemoration of the individual victims, "unto every person there is a name", as embodied in the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names.

Recent years have brought about great technological advantages in giving access to the vast collections. Documents and photos have been cataloged, scanned and made available to the public through online databases. These different sources can be researched and assist in reconstructing individual life stories of victims. In this presentation, Lital will give examples of how different sources available at Yad Vashem can create a puzzle, from which a narrative of a person's story can emerge.

Zamlung: Acquisition, Outreach and Community Engagement in the Post-Survivor Era Yedida Kanfer In recent years, the responsibility for maintaining Holocaust collections has shifted from survivors themselves to the librarians and archivists who preserve their stories. As the post-survivor era draws near, how do we continue to maintain user interest in Holocaust collections? This session proposes that wider communities must have a stake in the collections that until now have been supported and donated by Holocaust survivors. Drawing from the most recent literature on community archives, this session explores the meaning of ‘community’ and the extent to which the concept has shifted over time. It argues that strategic ‘zamlung’ (what we might term ‘acquisition’) allows archivists to create invested communities that will sustain institutions and the collections within them. The JFCS Holocaust Center has focused its outreach on Jewish communities (eg. the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, religious school students) as well as diverse, non-Jewish communities within the Bay Area. This session will end with hands-on examples of how the JFCS Holocaust Center has engaged its growing community via social media, web exhibits, and blog posts.

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Cataloging and Digitization of the Archives of the Szeged (Hungary) Jewish Community: A Central European Case Study Dora Pataricza and Kathy Glatter Szeged is the third biggest city in Hungary and was a focal point of Neolog Judaism. The archive’s spectrum contains official and private documents from a time span of two hundred years. In a two-year project, 82 linear feet of the Szeged Jewish Community are digitized and indexed. The archives contain the plans of the world-famous Szeged Synagogue (1907), paintings, and liturgical textiles. These are highly endangered and irreplaceable records that need to be preserved and made internationally researchable. Additionally, the Archive has created a large integrative database from historical and genealogical sites including the 1944 original Holocaust deportation list, plus 1,700 survivors who returned to Szeged in 1945-1946, sources from Yad Vashem, and the archival records. Electronic resources are used to locate maiden names of female Holocaust victims from their Hungarian marriage licenses. This innovative library project provides a comprehensive overview spanning decades recording the Szeged Jewish community.

Session 4B Salon CD

BEST NEW FICTION FOR ADULT READERS Moderator: Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

The Best New Fiction for Adult Readers: A Presentation by the AJL Jewish Fiction Award Committee Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, Rachel Kamin, Rosalind Reisner, Merrily Hart, Sheryl Stahl, Scott Nadelson, Mark Sarvas Over 100 works of fiction with Jewish content are published each year by mainstream, Jewish and small, independent presses. So many books, so little time! How do we sift through the good, the great and the not-so-great? How can reading books with Jewish characters and themes help educate, enlighten and inspire us? What are the new trends in the Jewish publishing world? Explore the latest and greatest in Jewish fiction for adult readers with the members of the AJL Fiction Award Committee and come prepared to share some of your favorite new titles. Our special guests will be two of the three 2019 award winners: Mark Sarvas, author of Memento Park, and Scott Nadelson, author of The Fourth Corner of the World.

Session 4C Salon GH

DIGITIZATION Moderator: Laurel Wolfson

Digitization of the Cummings Collection of Judaica and Hebraica at UCLA Stephanie Geller This presentation introduces the Cummings Collection of Judaica and Hebraica, part of the UCLA libraries, and the current project to digitize its particularly damaged and fragile volumes. The history of the collection, as well as some facts/figures about the collection and the digitization project will be discussed. The digitization decision tree and workflow will also be shared, followed by the decision to upload to the Hathi Trust and technical requirements for working with them. Finally, some of the difficulties of using OCR with Hebrew characters and on books with a number of conservation concerns will be shared.

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Digitizing 140,000 Pages of Yiddish Linguistics: Strategies and Lessons Learned Michelle Chesner In 2016, the National Endowment for the Humanities granted Columbia University Libraries funding to digitize and make available c.140,000 pages of field notes from the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry. The two-year project involved extensive collaboration, both within and outside the university, and required new ideas and strategies for digitizing a large quantity of archival materials for patron use. This talk will discuss some of the strategies, challenges, and creative thinking and work that was required to take the idea into reality. UCLA’s Sephardic Archive Initiative: Community Engagement, University Libraries and Building a Digital Presence Max Daniel This presentation will provide an overview of the Sephardic Archive Initiative at UCLA, with an aim of introducing this project to a wider audience of Judaica librarians and exploring issues related to university, library and community relationships. It also seeks to provide insight into the unique challenges and opportunities around collecting and accessing Sephardic materials. Specifically, the presentation will cover a few main topics: the initiative’s acquisitions, especially the archives of Los Angeles’ Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel; community engagement efforts including the March 2018 event, “Save the Data: Sephardic Antiques Roadshow” and an upcoming centennial commemoration of the community; and the building of a digital platform for the initiative.

Session 4D Salon IJ

INFORMATION LITERACY Moderator: Debbie Steinberg

Hands-On Resources of the JDC Archives for High School Librarians and Students Linda Levi The JDC Archives is an unparalleled repository of modern Jewish history. Its vast holdings document JDC’s global humanitarian mission, activities, and partnerships from World War I to the present and are a unique window into Jewish communal relief, development, migration, and resettlement in the 20th and 21st centuries in over 90 countries. The JDC Archives is a treasure trove for those researching their Jewish family history and for students of Jewish history. The JDC Archives website (archives.jdc.org) includes a database for digitized collections, an interactive timeline, topic guides for educators, and a names index. This presentation will highlight JDC Archives resources, with a focus on material of interest to high school librarians including:

• JDC Archives website and Our Stories feature

• JDC Archives Names Index and resources for family history projects

• How to access our historic Film Collection, including screening of a film clip

• JDC Archives Photo Collection

• Online exhibits

• Education resources on The Story of the St. Louis, Refuge in Shanghai, JDC and the Displaced Persons Camps, etc.

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Scrutinizing Bias and Searching for Accuracy: Information Literacy Instruction Interventions for Jewish Studies Students

Lynn Lampert and Michele Paskow Faculty from California State University Northridge (CSUN) will discuss the methods and assignments employed to teach a diverse group of undergraduate students to develop information literacy skills while gaining a basic understanding of Judaic and Jewish literacy through their enrollment in a popular general education Jewish studies course. This presentation will discuss how students are introduced to critical thinking skills through library instruction interventions that assign them to locate and analyze authoritative and scholarly information in order to help them learn how to detect the bias and misinformation that often permeates online digital searches. 10:45 a.m.-11:30 a.m. RAS Meeting Salon CD SSC Meeting Salon GH Accreditation Awards 11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. General Membership Meeting Salon CD

12:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m. AUTHOR’S LUNCHEON Salon EF Keynote Speaker: Eugene Yelchin

2:45 p.m.- 4:15 p.m.__ Session 5

Session 5A Salon AB

LC’S IJ SECTION UPDATE Moderator: Michelle Chesner

Israel and Judaica Section (Library of Congress) Update Haim Gottschalk, Gail Shirazi, Jeremiah Aaron Taub, and Galina Teverovsky Representatives from the Israel and Judaica Section of the Library of Congress will discuss a variety of acquisitions and cataloging matters, including new and recent classification numbers and subject headings, highlights of IJ Section cataloging practice, developments in serials cataloging and processing, and general Library of Congress news.

Session 5B Salon CD

MEET THE SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARD WINNERS Moderator: Ellen Cole

Meet the Sydney Taylor Book Award Winners Rebecca Levitan The 2019 award winning authors and illustrators will present their books. This award is given each year in three categories: Younger readers (birth to grade 3), Older readers (grades 4 – 8) and Teen readers (grades 9 – 12) for books that exemplify the highest literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience. Winner, Honor, and Notable books are given in each category.

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Session 5C Salon GH

JEWISH TEXTS AND LITERATURE Moderator: Marga Hirsch

The Holy Mysticat: Pairing Whimsy with Scholarship Rachel Adler, Maggie Anton, Rabbi Beth Lieberman Rabbi Rachel Adler PhD, Ellenson Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the HUC-JIR/Los Angeles, whose Engendering Judaism (1999) earned her the distinction of being the first female theologian to win the National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought, has a new book coming out. Tales of the Holy Mysticat (2019, Banot Press) began as a series of Facebook posts about Adler’s cat, intended as a creative way to share additional teachings with her students outside of the classroom. These posts garnered a following. Maggie Anton offered to publish Tales of the Holy Mysticat with her independent press, Banot Books (the original publisher of Rashi’s Daughters). Judaic books editor Rabbi Beth Lieberman is serving as editor on the project. Rachel, Maggie, and Rabbi Lieberman will speak as a team about how this process unfolded – the author’s vision for teaching Jewish texts, thought, and theology; the editor’s techniques of pairing the author’s whimsy with her scholarship; and the publisher’s strategies for bringing this out into the world. It is worth noting, of course, that all three individuals share a love of cats.

Bringing the Women into Chaim Potok’s Greatest Work Maggie Anton After reading Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and its sequel The Promise, Anton discovered Davita’s Harp, Potok’s novel with a female protagonist. Anton noted that the girl goes to school with The Chosen’s hero and, believing this was a “Chekov’s gun,” she waited for the book where they’d reconnect. But Potok died in 2002. Anton, a novelist and feminist Talmud student, revisited his duology. To say his female characters got short shrift is putting it mildly. The protagonists’ mothers didn’t even have names. So Anton wove those neglected women, others from Davita’s Harp and Potok’s male characters into a new novel. She created backstories based on extensive research into women’s lives in Brooklyn’s Jewish community between 1915-1955. And she gave her protagonists a romantic happy ending.

Recovering and Disseminating Ancient Jewish Texts in the Digital Age Malka Simkovich This session will address how ancient Jewish documents that have been discovered in the Cairo Genizah, in Greek Orthodox monasteries, and in the Judean desert's Dead Sea caves can be accessed and utilized in the teaching of Jewish history and literature. These documents have only recently been (or are in the process of being) digitized, and with this new accessibility, students can gain a deeper appreciation for how early Jewish literature was written, transmitted, and preserved. This session will also suggest ways in which Malka Z. Simkovich's book, Discovering Second Temple Literature, can be used to supplement the teaching of these documents.

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4:30 p.m.- 6:00 p.m. Session 6

Session 6A Salon AB

COLLECTIONS FROM NEAR AND FAR Moderator: Elliot H. Gertel

From Guatemala to California via Brooklyn and Ann Arbor: The Life and Work of Sephardi Author Victor Perera (1934-2003) as Reflected in the University of Michigan Library Special Collections Research Center. Gabriel Mordoch A son of Sephardic parents from Jerusalem, the author, journalist and scholar Victor Haim Perera (1934-2003), was born in Guatemala City and moved to New York at the age of twelve. He graduated from Brooklyn College and subsequently received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. After that, he moved to California to teach literature, writing and journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and later at the Berkeley campus. Perera’s writings focused on Sephardic Jewry and on Latin America (particularly the Maya Indians). The goal of this presentation is to offer a glimpse into his works, personal library, interviews and other materials housed at the University of Michigan Library Special Collections Research Center.

Private Collections in Vilnius Jewish Public Library Zilvinas Beliauskas Vilnius Jewish Public Library is in the process of structuring and presenting private libraries of distinguished book donators. In this way, not only VJP library’s collection is being expanded, but the memory and character of some prominent personalities is saved and reflected.

This presentation will focus on three personalities who contributed to the collection.

Izrealis Lempertas (1925-2013) was a professor in Vilnius Pedagogical University and with the restoration of the Lithuanian Independence dedicated his scientific endeavors to the investigation of the Jewish and in particular Litvak culture and history.

Esfir Bramson-Alpernienė (1924 -2016) was a great cultural, social and literary activist, librarian, book collector, and the author of the famous “At the Treasury of Judaica” (2009).

Irena Veisaitė,(1918- ) is a Holocaust survivor and great humanist, specialist in theater, art, literature and humanities.

The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture: Jews and Oscars Casey Ann Mitchell The Margaret Herrick Library is a world-renowned, non-circulating reference and research collection devoted to the history and development of the motion picture as an art form and an industry. Established in 1928 and now located in Beverly Hills, the library is open to the public

and used year-round by students, scholars, historians and industry professionals. This presentation will highlight its collections and databases.

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Session 6B Salon CD

A PRESENTATION BY MEMBERS OF THE SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARD COMMITTEE Moderator: Rebecca Levitan

Presenters: Rebecca Levitan, Rena Citrin, Shoshana Flax, Sylvie Shaffer, Marjorie Shuster, Rivka Yerushalmi The committee will discuss favorite Jewish children’s books as seen from the award submissions and give a behind-the-scenes look at how the award winners are selected.

Session 6C Salon GH

PERSIAN LITERATURE AND PUBLISHING Moderator: Ari Babaknia

Persian Literature and Publishing Gina Nahai, Ari Babaknia, Bijan Khalili Dr. Ari Babaknia will speak about his four-volume book in Persian on the Holocaust and its impact on Iranian's awareness and sensitivity to this human tragedy, specifically on non-Jews. Bijan Khalili, publisher, bookseller and journalist, will speak about the publications of the Iranian Jewish community outside Iran in the last forty years. Gina Nahai will speak about the reasons why the 2,500-year history of Iranian Jews went largely unrecorded until they moved to the US, the process of collecting data, and the impact on the community on seeing their stories gathered and archived. Gina’s work deals primarily with the history (both ancient and contemporary) of Iranian Jews, from their beginnings in what was then Babylon to their present here in the United States.

Session 6D Salon IJ

IMPORTANT PERSONS AND THEIR COLLECTIONS Moderator: Sharon Horowitz

Ester Eliashev and the Idea of People’s University (Di Folks Univerzitet) in Interwar Kaunas Julijana Leganovic When Kaunas in 1919 became the provisional capital of the newly established Lithuanian state, Kaunas Jewish Community took an active part in the development of social, cultural, educational and political life. This year, during the cataloging work at the National Library, a collection of manuscripts, notes and letters which belonged to Ester Eliashev - literary critic, journalist and teacher – was discovered. These documents reveal about trying to establish a Jewish University (Di Folks Univerzitet) in Kaunas, cooperation with Albert Einstein and Simon Dubnow, and efforts to have an institution of Jewish higher education.

The Friedlandia Library: A Missed Opportunity for the Jewish People? Dan Rabinowitz By the end of the 19th century, the title of greatest library in Eastern Europe, in terms of size, rarities, of both books and manuscripts was that of Moses Areyeh Löeb Friedland (1826-1899). According to some, his collection was even ranked in the same class as that of the Bodleian. The library included three hundred volumes of manuscripts (including a few on parchment), thirty-two incunabula, and 10,000 volumes printed mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The

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collection was created by proxy, through the efforts of the outstanding bibliographer Samuel Wiener (Samuil Eremeevich Viner, 1860-1929). In the early 1890s, Friedland began examining various Jewish institutions to which to donate his library. In 1892, however, Friedland rejected all of the Jewish options and instead donated his library to the Russian state, to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg where it still resides. Dan will discuss the history of the formation of the library, its path to the Asiatic museum and why it was not donated to a Jewish institution, some of its most important items and Wiener, one of the great bibliographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose catalog of the Friedland collection is still relied upon by scholars today.

A Newly-Discovered Document of Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Jewry: The Notebook of a Mohel in Baltimore and Beyond Chaim Meiselman During the course of cataloging work at Towson University, Chaim discovered a volume of Sod ha-Shem, a manual for a mohel (ritual circumciser) printed in Amsterdam in 1744. Appended to the leaves is a complete log of the mohel Noteh Grümbach's travels beginning in 1818 in Hesse and Bavaria and environs and continuing with his relocation to Baltimore in 1853. The historical record presented by the writing in this volume is wide-ranging and significant. This presentation will detail events in Grümbach’s life and situate his work in the broader context of 19th century American history. Chaim will demonstrate Grümbach's extensive itineraries into states as far as Ohio and South Carolina via a map outlining dates and places of travel, and will discuss the effects of increased urbanization and the growth of railroads on his travels.

6:15-p.m.-8:30 p.m. Awards Dinner Salon EF

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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19 7:30 a.m.-8:45 a.m. Breakfast Salon EF

Join the AJL Fiction Award Committee as they host an informal discussion of the 2019 award winner, Memento Park at 8:00 a.m. in the ballroom.

9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Registration Grand Foyer

9:00 a.m.- 10:30 a.m. Session 7

Session 7A Salon AB

BIBLE COLLECTIONS Moderator: David B. Levy

The Book of Psalms: Translations and Transformations

Paul Miller The Hebrew book of Psalms (Tehillim) has been translated and transformed to become an integral part of Jewish and Christian worship throughout the centuries. This presentation explores the history of the use of Psalms in liturgy. It will be illustrated by examples of worship books from the collections of the Lowy-Winkler Family Rare Book Center. It will also include musical examples.

Early Tanach Printings in the Yeshiva University Library Avrom Shuchatowitz

In August 2018, Dr. Parviz Lalazari donated two volumes of early Tanach (Hebrew Bible) printings to the library of Yeshiva University. One was a volume from a Tanach printed in Venice in 1524 by Daniel Bomberg (1483-1553) and the other was a volume from an Amsterdam publication by Moses Frankfurter (1672-1762). Beginning with just these two volumes, YU proceeded to locate other uncatalogued volumes so complete sets could be made. YU now has three Bomberg printings: 1524, 1546, and 1547. These Bible printings contain many early commentaries, as well as additional material on the Masorah, the traditional text of the Bible.

Also completed was a set of the 1724 Amsterdam printing. This one also contained a large compilation of early and later commentaries. There were multiple copies, each one from a different owner. One owner appended to the volume handwritten information and newspaper clippings about his family. Other owners were in Poland and England, each bearing their stamps and inscriptions.

Alpha Beta of ben Sira Yoram Bitton This year is the 500th anniversary of a publication of very unique and interesting book, Alpha Betah of Ben Sira. The book was published for the first time in Constantinople in 1519. It became very popular and was published many times in the 16th century. The book, which caused disagreement in the Middle Ages, is representative of what today we would call Pulp Fiction or low-quality literature. Yoram will discuss the importance of the book and more importantly, the social-historical context that caused this book to be published.

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Session 7B Salon CD

GENERAL INTEREST Moderator: Dan Wyman

Anne Frank at 90: Why Is the Diary Not Enough Today? Menno Metselaar In June 2019, Anne Frank would have been 90 years old. Anne and her family’s hiding place, now a museum, is still one of the top attractions in Amsterdam today. At the same time, studies show that fifty percent of millennials in the United States don’t know what Auschwitz was, and twenty percent can’t tell you what the Holocaust was. As a result, Anne Frank House is producing literature and educational support materials to help young people make connections between the past and the present, to make what seems like distant history feel relevant to their lives and their current experiences. Speaking from his long-standing role as Project Manager at the Anne Frank House museum, Menno Metselaar will talk about using the familiar Anne Frank as the original source for new books, teaching materials, websites and exhibits that are being developed to help both adults and young people better understand the experience of anti-Semitism, as well as all forms of racism and injustice that they may experience in their lives or see playing out in the news and the world around them. This session will encourage discussion around collection development relevant to these topics, and the resources available to librarians who want to work with Anne Frank House. Menno will answer librarians’ questions and exchange ideas in regards to exhibits, special projects and programming, and support materials for educators, libraries and schools.

A Sabbatical in Israel: Libraries, Bookstores and Non-Print Adventures

Rachel Leket-Mor During her semester-long sabbatical in Israel, Rachel visited several archives and research, public, and special libraries, mostly for research and study purposes, but also just for fun. In this presentation, she will share her experiences as a library user in both famed and obscure, regional libraries where she made discoveries of all sorts.

Using Libraries as Jewish Art and Design Museums Hillel Smith Most library users are looking to find content. However, Hillel often uses Judaica collections superficially, examining how the books look and feel. By doing so, he can gain inspiration for his work as a visual artist, as well as develop a deeper understanding of how Jews throughout history have thought about their place in the cultures they inhabited. Paying close attention to aesthetics - including typography, illustration, and overall design - we can discover historic trends in taste and style. We can see evidence of interaction between Jews and non-Jews and view the interplay between assimilationist and isolationist tendencies. We can glean insight into the creators' political and religious affiliations and sympathies. And we can see the big questions of our day reflected in artifacts from the distant past. Particularly as we explore what it means to be Jewish now, in a globalized, humanistic society, finding precedent is empowering. How can we explore our collections in new ways? What else do they have to teach us?

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Session 7C Salon GH

SSCPL ROUNDTABLE Moderator: Debbie Steinberg

SSC President Emily Bergman will introduce an informative session of seven short “Pecha Kucha” presentations by various SSC members (to be announced), including discussions of present issues relating to school, synagogue, JCC and public librarians. Art Projects from Pinterest: Attractive bulletin boards and student art projects give the library visibility along with disseminating Jewish knowledge. This presentation will show how to navigate the website, Pinterest, to locate assorted ideas and projects. Presented by: Ellen Share Capsule Collections from Beit HaTfutsot: Learn how to choose, order, and display a variety of wonderful archival photo collections to your community, offered for free from Tel Aviv’s Diaspora Museum, Beit HaTfutsot. Presented by: Lisa Silverman How does one go about rejuvenating a neglected library collection? The answer is with a lot of humor, flexibility, creativity, and a willingness to try some unorthodox methods. Presented by: Anjelica N. Ruiz Books teaching values: Librarians know that children’s books can also be used to teach important values to adults. Examples of books that can be used to teach both parents and children about treating people equally will be shared. Presented by: Linda Blahnik Hand in Hand with Tech: Students need to be proficient with digital devices, and they are. An all-digital approach often leads to superficial learning. Discover research-based strategies to strengthen students' information literacy by combining digital information and tools with that which needs no recharging--the human hand! Presented by Karen Morganstern Jewish Technology Education for Adults: Learn about resources that can enhance both Jewish education and entertainment requests by your library patrons. Presented by: Samara Katz Advocacy Tools for Judaic Librarians: We will review scholarly research demonstrating the nexus between library services and academic achievement. Examples of successful collaborations between educators and librarians in secular and non-secular educational institutions will be demonstrated. We will provide reasons why it is crucial that educational institutions commit to high levels of funding for library spaces, library staff and library materials. Presented by: Patricia Givens

Session 7D Salon IJ

CATALOGING Moderator: Joy Kingsolver

Cataloging Scrolls and Posters Sheryl Stahl Over the years, Sheryl had been letting the library’s collection of Esther scrolls and posters sit around in the hopes that they would catalog themselves or that she would wake up one day with the ability to identify the provenance of each piece in these collections. Eventually she decided that it was better to catalog them poorly, than to have them on a shelf uncataloged. Sheryl will go over the minimal requirements for cataloging scrolls and her adventures in describing the posters.

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Metadata Granularity, Historical Anachronism: Towards a Digital Reconstruction of Catalan Jewry Neil Manel Frau-Cortes This presentation is of two digital humanities projects aimed at reconstructing aspects of Catalano-Aragonese Jewish literature. The first one deals with the relation teacher-student among Catalan rabbis and the visualization of clusters and schools of thought. The second one aims at reconstructing the Majorcan and Catalan nusach through digital reunification of manuscripts and prints of prayer books. Both cases serve as a reflection on metadata granularity, including the inconvenience of grouping historical nations under anachronistic modern labels such as “Medieval Spain.” Special attention will be paid to the use and edition of Wikidata as authority corpus.

It All Adds Up: Chronograms in Hebrew Books Marlene Schiffman Chronograms are often used as a dating method for classical Hebrew books. They are constructed from a phrase or biblical verse which yields a numerical value when the letters are added up. They are meant to yield a year, but often, also give another message. They often reveal the author’s name, messianic hope, or a quotation from the Bible that is relevant to the topic of the book. The mathematics are not always so easy to compute: sometimes the cataloger has to count only certain letters, and sometimes s/he has to know which ones to subtract. We come across these every day in our cataloging, in both rare books and in recent publications. This paper will discuss the way in which chronograms are presented and how they can be useful to catalogers. 10:30 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Board buses to AJU

11:45 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. Session 8

Session 8A Beginning in Ostrow & Sperber Library

TOUR

Session 8B Beginning in Sculpture Garden

TOUR

Session 8C Beginning in Rare Book Room

TOUR

Session 8D Beginning in Mikveh

TOUR

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12:30 p.m.-2:15 p.m. LUNCH AJU Feinstein Lecture by Todd Presner

2:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Tours 6:30 p.m. Conference Recap (for conference planners)

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(Generously sponsored by AJLSC: AJL of Southern California)

Rachel Adler – Engendering Judaism Maggie Anton – Rashi’s Daughter Trilogy

Jonathan Auxier – Sweep Barbara Beitz – The Sundown Kid: A Southwestern Shabbat

Nancy Churnin – Irving Berlin: Immigrant Boy Lee Cohen – Children of Willesden Lane

Elliot Dorff – Jews and Genes Susan Dubin – Katzele and the Silver Candlesticks Marjorie Gann – Five Thousand Years of Slavery

Jeff Gottesfeld – The Tree in the Courtyard Marjorie Ingall – Mamaleh Knows Best

Emily Jenkins – All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah Jonathan Kirsch –The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan

Rebecca Klempner – Adina at Her Best Michal Lemberger – After Abel and Other Stories

Michelle Markel – Hanukkah Hamster Scott Nadelson – The Fourth Corner of the World

Gina Nahai – The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. Erica Perl – All Three Stooges Henry Rasof – Here I Seek You

Diane Rauchwerger – Dinosaur on Shabbat Rick Richman – Racing Against History Barb Rosenstock – Through the Window

Alva Sachs – Dancing Dreidels James Rey Sanchez – Illustrator of Irving Berlin: Immigrant Boy

Mark Sarvas – Memento Park Erica Silverman – Liberty’s Voice: Story of Emma Lazarus

Vesper Stamper – What the Night Sings Anne Stampler – The Rooster Prince of Breslov

Aaron Taub – Prodigal Children in the House of God April Halprin Wayland – New Year at the Pier Ron Wolfson – Relational Judaism Handbook

Eugene Yelchin – Spy Runner Jane Zalben – A Moon for Moe and Mo

Paul O. Zelinksy – Illustrator of All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah

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Wednesday June 19 @ 2:30 p.m. Tours Depart American Jewish University to:

Skirball Cultural Center: We will tour Skirball's Library and Archive and the core museum collection, then view the Noah's Ark Experience: an award-winning children's and family destination. Explore a floor-to-ceiling wooden ark, filled to the rafters with whimsical animals created from recycled materials. There is also a large collection of children's books telling the story of the Flood from many different cultures.

Getty Museum: Kathleen Salomon, Chief Librarian of the Getty Research Institute, will lead us in a behind-the scenes tour of the library, including special collections from the vault. In addition, Elizabeth Morrison, Senior Curator of Manuscripts, will show us the newly acquired illuminated 13th century Rothschild Pentateuch.

UCLA Special Collections: Diane Mizrachi, UCLA's Librarian for Jewish Studies, will lead us on a tour of UCLA's Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library. This collection holds a number of Judaica and Hebraica treasures. Then take time on your own to walk over to the iconic Powell Library, one of the first two buildings constructed in the Italian Romanesque style at UCLA's Westwood Campus.

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Sandra Joy Aguilar is currently Manager of Metadata at USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. Previously, she directed USC’s Warner Bros Archives of historical papers and Industrial Light + Magic’s Media Library of visual effects. She graduated with a BA in film studies from UC Santa Barbara and a master’s degree in library and information science from UCLA. She is a member of Tech History Sub-committee of the Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, member of MIC'D Alliance (Oral Histories), and member of Archive Advisory Council for the Art Director’s Guild. Judy Baston has worked as volunteer staff for the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco, CA since March 1992, and also coordinates a monthly Genealogy Clinic at the Library. A former Vice President and current Secretary of the Litvak Special Interest Group (SIG), Judy has served for nearly twenty years on the organization’s Board and coordinates LitvakSIG’s Lida District and Oshmiany District Research Groups. She is on the Executive Committee and Board of JRI-Poland. For nearly twenty years, she has moderated the Discussion Groups of LitvakSIG and JRI-Poland, and she also moderates the BialyGen and Lodz discussion groups. In July 2015, Judy received the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS) Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization’s conference in Jerusalem. Lital Beer is the newly appointed Director of the Yad Vashem Libraries. Previously, she was the Director of the Reference and Information Department at Yad Vashem Archives Division. She received her BA in behavioral sciences (Cum Laude) from Ben Gurion University and her MA in communications (Cum Laude) from Hebrew University. In 2017, she graduated from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in information studies. Lital started at Yad Vashem in 2006 as the Head of the Pedagogic Center at the International School for Holocaust Studies. She then moved on to the archives to head the Outreach Section. In her next role, she established and headed the project, "Gathering the Fragments," a national campaign aimed to collect personal items from the Holocaust period, held by Holocaust survivors, family members and the public. Lital has presented about Yad Vashem Archives at professional conferences and workshops, Jewish genealogy conferences, and for different educational groups. She has advanced the Reference and Information Department by recruiting and training new staff members and by implementing an ongoing learning program to enhance staff professional skills. Zilvinas Beliauskas was born in Lithuania, received his master’s degree in psychology at Vilnius University, post–graduate studies in the Department of History of Philosophy and Logic, Vilnius University. He worked as psychologist in the National Martynas Mazvydas Library (State Library then) as psychologist since 1982, in the Lithuanian Institute of Culture and Arts since 1989 to 1998, visiting lecturer to Vilnius University (1986 to 2002) Director of the Information Center for Homecoming Lithuanians (1998 – 2009), Psychology Lecturer in Mykolas Romeris University (2010-2015), Head of the Vilnius Jewish Public Library (2012-present). Director of Vilnius Jewish Public Library Charity and Support Foundation, Director of Vilnius Jewish Theater. Sharon Benamou is the Hebraica/Judaica and Music Catalog Librarian at UCLA. She is currently the AJL Vice President for Membership and has served as the coordinator for the Jewish Music Roundtable in the Music Library Association. Shulamith (Shuli) Berger is the Curator of Special Collections and Hebraica-Judaica at the Mendel Gottesman Library, Yeshiva University. Monika Biesaga, PhD candidate, is a graduate of library studies and Jewish studies at the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. She is researching the history of Jewish public library movement in interwar Poland. Monica’s academic interests evolve around the history of Jewish libraries, the fate of Jewish books after the Second World War, and the management of Judaica collections. She received scholarships from the Rothschild Foundation, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign

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Affairs, the Center of Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Dina Abramowicz Young Emerging Scholars Fellowship of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Monika is currently a reference specialist at the British Library. Yoram Bitton is the Director of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion libraries. Linda Blasnik is a librarian at the Tycher Library in Dallas, TX.

Ahava Cohen holds a doctorate in RDA from Bar Ilan University. She serves as head of the Hebrew cataloguing department at the National Library of Israel (NLI) and is a member of the Israeli Inter-University Cataloguing Committee. She also teaches cataloguing in the David Yellin College MLIS program and heads the national continuing professional development program in cataloguing. On the international front, Ahava is chair of the European RDA Interest Group (EURIG) and serves on its Editorial committee. She is the backup European representative to the RDA Steering Committee and represents NLI on the VIAF Council.

Max Modiano Daniel is a PhD candidate in history at UCLA whose dissertation research explores how 20th century Los Angeles gave rise to emerging transnational, pan-ethnic, and culturally distinct Sephardic Jewish communities. Currently, he is a fellow in the Center for Primary Research and Training at UCLA Library Special Collections, processing the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel Archives. He is also co-director of ucLadino, a student-run Judeo-Spanish language study group, and a researcher for the Sephardic Archive Initiative at the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Rabbi Tamar Duvdevani, PhD, was ordained at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem in 2003 and has served as a Rabbi-educator teaching Talmud and Rabbinic literature in Batei Midrash (education centers) throughout Israel. She received her PhD from HUC-JIR in Cincinnati for her dissertation "Literary Aspects of Rabbinic Attributions in the Babylonian Talmud". Rabbi Duvdevani has a BA in Yiddish and Jewish studies from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an MA in Talmud and gender studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a MAHL and MPhil from HUC-JIR. In 2018, she was appointed as the director of the Abramov Library at the HUC-JIR campus in Jerusalem. She was born and raised in Kibbutz Rosh-Hanikra and lives in Jerusalem. Daryn Eller is assistant archivist at the USC Shoah Foundation, where she manages the institutional media archive. She has a BA from University of California, Berkeley, and an MLIS from San Jose State University. Neil M. Frau-Cortes is the University of Maryland Judaica, Hebraica and Metadata Cataloger. He is involved in digitization projects for Hebrew texts and supervises a group of non-Romance language catalogers. Frau-Cortes holds a PhD in medieval Hebrew literature; MLIS; master’s in Jewish music and cantorial studies; cantorial ordination; and a Licenciatura in Hebrew-Aramaic philology. Marjorie Gann is a Canadian author of non-fiction books for middle grade and young adult readers. Her two most recent books, co-authored with Janet Willen, concern the themes of slavery and abolition. Five Thousand Years of Slavery, recognized as a 2012 Notable Book for a Global Society by the Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group, International Reading Association, tells the story of world slavery from Antiquity to the present. Most recently, Speak a Word for Freedom: Women Against Slavery, tells the stories of fourteen women, past and present, who fought or are currently fighting against slavery and trafficking. A retired elementary teacher, Marjorie was for many years the reviewer of Holocaust fiction for the journal CCL (Canadian Children’s Literature). Stephanie Geller is a current MLIS student at UCLA where she is specializing in rare books and conservation. Her thesis conducts a bibliometric analysis of manuscript databases to determine the relative rates of adoption of Jewish and Christian bookmakers in Medieval Italy and Iberia, and the efficacy of using online databases for such a study. Previously, she earned a master’s in book history from the École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques where her research on the depiction of Jews in Early Modern English literature resulted in a ‘mention bien’ on her thesis. She received her undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of Colorado.

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Patricia Spiegel Givens is Synagogue Librarian at Congregation Shalom Bayit in Oregon and served as PJ Library Local Administer for five years. She is employed by Central Oregon Community College’s Barber Library and Deschutes Public Library in Bend, OR. She has a JD from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a BS in communications from Boston University. Kathy Glatter, MD graduated with honors from Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School. Her grandparents left Budapest, immigrated and hid their Jewish roots. A professional genealogist revealed that relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. She is related to Miklós (Glatter) Radnóti, the great Holocaust poet, and is working on graduate certification in Holocaust studies from Gratz College. Annette Y. Goldsmith is the librarian at the Levy Library, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles. She has taught graduate classes in children’s and young adult literature and storytelling, most recently for the University of Washington. Annette is the lead editor, along with Theo Heras and Susan Corapi, of Reading the World’s Stories: An Annotated Bibliography of International Youth Literature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). She is honored to have received AJL’s 2017 Groner-Wikler Award and excited to be a member of the inaugural Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) Translated YA Book Prize committee. Haim Gottschalk earned an MAEd from the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University) and an MLS from Indiana University. He worked with Judaica collections at various academic and synagogue libraries, as well as a special collections library and a research unit. He is currently a librarian in the Israel and Judaic Section in the Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. Rachel Kamin has been a synagogue librarian for over twenty years and has worked as the Director of the Joseph and Mae Gray Cultural & Learning Center at North Suburban Synagogue Beth El in Highland Park, IL since 2008. She currently serves on the AJL New Jewish Fiction Award Committee and contributes articles and book reviews to BookLinks, School Library Journal, Jewish Book World, Judaica Librarianship, Library Journal, and AJL Reviews. She facilitates the Sisterhood Book Club at NSS Beth El and also leads book discussions at several synagogues and organizations across the Chicago area. Rachel holds a BA in history from Grinnell College and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Michigan. Yedida Kanfer manages the Tauber Holocaust Library and Archives at the JFCS Holocaust Center in San Francisco and teaches students and adults about the Holocaust and patterns of genocide. Prior to her position at the JFCS Holocaust Center, Yedida served as a research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and worked for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC. Yedida received her PhD in East European and Jewish history from Yale University. Over the course of her studies, she has lived in Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Having studied Russian, Polish, Hebrew, German, and French for research purposes, her favorite language is Yiddish. Samara Katz is a card-carrying millennial librarian and self-proclaimed book nerd who searches for creative solutions to make Jewish education relevant to people three to one hundred years old. Bijan Khalili was born in Iran and received his BSc in civil engineering from the University of Pahlavi. He moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and studied Persian literature at UCLA. In 1981, he co-founded the Ketab Corporation and is currently the president. Ketab Corporation publishes and provides services to those interested in such subjects as Persian culture, literature, mysticism, history, politics, etc. Ketab Corporation encompasses several sections consisting of the first Persian bookstore in the United States, Iranian Yellow Pages, Iranian Pocket Yellow Pages, and the 08 Information Network (Persian speaking directory assistant). It contains the largest global database of businesses, residential facilities, and cultural information of Iranians all around the world. Additionally, Bijan Khalili is the publisher of Iranshahr Magazine and the Iranshahr News Agency online. Ketab Corporation is the recipient of the APPY Gold Award for marketing innovation (1991) and the APPY Bronze award for Community Service (1994). Mark Kligman holds the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music and is the director of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music. He is the Chair of Ethnomusicology and a professor in Ethnomusicology and Musicology at UCLA. Mark specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern

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Jewish communities and various areas of popular Jewish music. He has published on the liturgical music of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in journals, as well as his book, Maqām and Liturgy: Ritual, Music and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Wayne State University, 2009) Lynn Lampert is the Coordinator of Information Literacy and Instruction and a library faculty member at California State University (CSU) – Northridge. Lynn has served as the Jewish studies librarian since 2001. She earned both her masters of library and information science and master's in history (emphasis in Modern European Jewish History) from UCLA. Julijana Leganovic is a chief methodologist-researcher at the Judaica Research Center of the Department of Documentary Heritage at the Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania and doctoral student at the Lithuanian Institute of History. Her PhD thesis is titled “Kaunas Jews in the Republic of Lithuania (1918-1940): Between Integration, Acculturation and Segregation” (academic supervisor Dr. Darius Staliunas). Her main interests lie in the history of cultural and political life of the Lithuanian Jewry. Julijana explores this topic by focusing on the situation of Kaunas Jewish community in the interwar years. Rachel Leket-Mor is the Open Stack Collections Curator at ASU Library. She curates ASU’s Judaica and Israeliana collections, including the IsraPulp Collection. A seasoned AJL presenter, she served as RAS Vice-President and President and is the current editor of AJL’s scholarly journal, Judaica Librarianship. Dr. Lara Lempert is the head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania and the YIVO archivist for the Edward Blanc Vilna Collections Project in Lithuania. Her research field is the cultural history of European and Lithuanian Jewry. She is an author of numerous articles and an editor of several books and has curated a number of exhibitions. Lara participated in the AJL conference in 2018 as a part of the panel organized by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the National Library of Lithuania. Amalia S. Levi is an archivist and cultural heritage professional currently residing in Barbados. She is the founding director of The HeritEdge Connection, a non-profit organization dedicated to forging collaborations, connecting people, resources, and institutions through cultural heritage projects. Most recently, Amalia has teamed with the Barbados Archives and was awarded an Endangered Archives Programme grant through the British Library to digitize the historic newspaper The Barbados Mercury. Previously, she completed the archival processing and digitization of the records of the Synagogue Restoration Project in Bridgetown, Barbados. Amalia holds an MLS with a concentration in archives, and an MA in history with a concentration in Jewish studies, both from the University of Maryland; an MA in museum studies from Yildiz University in Istanbul, Turkey; and a BA in archaeology and history of art from the University of Athens, Greece. She has worked in museums, developing exhibits, and conducting archival research, and was the founding curator of the Jewish Museum of Turkey in Istanbul. Amalia is interested in augmenting historical scholarship on diasporas and underrepresented populations through linking and enriching dispersed collections. Personal website: archiveland.com; professional website: heritedge.foundation Linda Levi is Assistant Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where she directs the JDC Archives, one of the most significant collections in the world for the study of modern Jewish history. The JDC Archives include 3 miles of text documents, 100,000 photographs, over 6,000 books, and 1,100 audio-recordings including oral histories. The JDC Archives are situated in two centers, NY and Jerusalem. Ms. Levi is a graduate of New York University and received her MA in Contemporary Jewish Studies from Brandeis University. She has lectured extensively throughout the world about the JDC Archives. Rebecca Levitan is a full-time librarian with the Pikesville branch of the Baltimore County Public Library. She holds a BA in history and Judaic studies from Binghamton University, and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. As the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee and a mother of two little girls, she is passionate about quality Jewish children's books. When she's not reading or taking care of the kids, Rebecca can be found knitting shawls that are too warm to wear most of the year in Baltimore.

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Eli Lieberman is Judaica librarian at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In addition to his MLS, he holds a master’s in religious studies from New York University. He has been following the history and development of graphic novels and comic books as an academic interest for several years. Chaim Meiselman has been involved with rare Judaica from a very young age, cataloging first the collections of Rabbi Jacob I. Ruderman and Rabbi Jacob Weinberg at Ner Israel Rabbinical College - a collection of 30,000 rare Rabbinic volumes. He cataloged dozens of 16th century Hebraic volumes at the Library of Congress for the Efraim Deinard - Jacob Schiff Collection. In 2017, he obtained a certificate in rare book studies from the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia in one summer, the first to accomplish this in that amount of time. He worked at the Towson University Special Collections and Archives cataloging volumes in the former Baltimore Hebrew Institute – Joseph Meyerhoff Collection. Currently, he is the Judaica Special Collections cataloger for the University of Pennsylvania libraries. Menno Metselaar has been working at the Anne Frank House museum since 1990. He is Project Manager for the department of Publications and Presentations. Over the years, Menno has written extensively on Anne Frank, her diary and the Secret Annex for various age groups. He has contributed to the development of publications, (traveling) exhibitions, educational materials, and websites. Publications about Anne Frank include, amongst others, Anne Frank: Her Life in Words and Pictures from the Archives of The Anne Frank House (with Ruud van der Rol, 2009), Anne Frank: Dreaming, Thinking, Writing (2016) and All about Anne (Sept. 2018), published by Second Story Press in North America. Paul Miller (MMus, MDiv, MA, MLIS) is the Director of Library Services at the American Jewish University. He has been at the Ostrow Library for twenty-two years. Previously, he taught music and mathematics and worked as an organist and choir director. Casey Ann Mitchell is the Metadata Librarian at the Margaret Herrick Library, where she works with the book collection and various other published materials. She has worked in libraries for ten years including for institutions such as Pepperdine University, American Jewish University and El Camino College. Gabriel Mordoch is the Judaica and Western European Language cataloger at the University of Michigan Library. He holds a PhD in studies of the Portuguese speaking-world from the Ohio State University, a master’s degree in Jewish languages from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a bachelor’s degree in Hebrew from the University of São Paulo. Karen Morgenstern holds an MA and has been the teacher-librarian at Brawerman Elementary School of Wilshire Boulevard Temple for eleven years. Gina Nahai is a writer, columnist, and emeritus professor of Creative Writing at USC. Russel Neiss is a Jewish educator, technologist and activist who builds critically acclaimed educational apps and experiences used by thousands of people each day. He is equally fluent in Yiddish and Javascript. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, JTA, and other media outlets. Russel began his career as an itinerant Jewish educator in the Deep South and has worked in a variety of educational settings including the Jewish Museum, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Brandeis University. He received his MLS from Queens College and currently serves as a Software Engineer at Sefaria. Michele Paskow is a Jewish Studies faculty member at California State University Northridge. Michele also serves as the spiritual leader of Congregation B'nai Emet in Simi Valley where she’s been the rabbi since 1992. She teaches two Jewish studies courses at California State University, Northridge - Introduction to Judaism, and Humanities in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Society. She holds a master’s in Hebrew literature and Rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College.

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Dóra Pataricza, PhD has MAs and a PhD in classical philology from the University of Debrecen. She works as a project manager for the Szeged Jewish Community (Hungary) and the Helsinki Jewish Community. Dóra’s great-great-grandmother got on the 1940 Szeged transport train and survived. Olga Potap is a professional librarian, working at the School of Theology Library at Boston University. She holds a master’s of science in library and information science from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science and a master’s in liberal arts from Boston University. While pursuing her master’s at Boston University, she did course work in Judaic studies with Professors Elie Wiesel and Hillel Levine. Olga is a member of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) and AJL. Her research focuses on the role of civil societies and benevolent organizations in the communal solidarity and orientation of European Jewish communities at different points in their development. Olga’s most recent research and publication are dedicated to Abba Balosher’s library – an unknown Jewish Library in pre-WW II Lithuania, its fate, destruction, and miracle founding. Dan Rabinowitz is a Research Associate at the Tauber Institute at Brandeis University and the author of the recently published book, The Lost Library: The Legacy of Vilna’s Strashun Library in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2018). He is also the founder and editor of the Seforim blog, a website devoted to the study of the Hebrew book.

Heidi Rabinowitz is the Director of the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, FL. She is Past President of AJL and is currently serving as Member Relations Chair and as a member of the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award Committee. Since 2005, she has hosted The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish books, music, film and web at www.bookoflifepodcast.com. Leora Raikin has been a keynote speaker at West Point Military Academy, Chapman University, Jewish American Holocaust Art & Literature Symposium and on board Uniworld’s Jewish Heritage Cruises. She is committed to using art as a means to educate. As founder and Executive Director of the David Labkovski Project (DLP), she co-developed an educational program to educate audiences about Eastern European life before, during and after the Holocaust through a body of 400 pieces of narrative art by her great uncle, Lithuanian-Israeli artist David Labkovski (1906-1991). The project-based educational program is now in middle schools, high schools and colleges in the US, as well as in Lithuania, South Africa and Mexico. Rosalind Reisner is a librarian and the author of Jewish American Literature: A Guide to Reading Interests (winner of the 2004 AJL Judaica Reference Award) and most recently co-editor and contributing author to Women in the Literary Landscape: A WNBA Centennial Publication (2017, C&R Press). She has worked in public, academic and synagogue libraries. From 2010-2014, she chaired the reading committee for the Great Group Reads list of National Reading Group Month titles. Rosalind speaks and writes about Jewish American literature, readers’ advisory services and books for book groups. Her website/blog, http://areadersplace.net, is a resource for fiction and nonfiction. Anjelica N. Ruiz is the Director of Libraries and Archives at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, TX. In her spare time, she teaches religious school, crochets, travels, and posts her writing on www.anjelicaruiz.com Vadim Sapozhnikov, a native of Moscow, USSR, has resided in Calgary, Canada since 1981. A graduate of the University of Calgary, he has extensive background in the areas of Russian-English translation and interpretation. He is currently working on the translation of Vilnius: In Search of Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, a project sponsored by the Good Will Foundation, expected to be published in 2019-2020. Daniel Scheide is a cataloging librarian at Florida Atlantic University. He serves as member-at-large on the AJL Council and has previously served as RAS president. Marlene Schiffman is Judaica Cataloger at the Mendel Gottesman Library at Yeshiva University, past President of the New York Metropolitan Area chapter of AJL, occasional contributor to Judaica Librarianship, and co-author (with Leslie Monchar) of an AJL publication, Creating a Collection: A Basic Book List for Judaic Libraries (6th ed. Charleston, SC: Create Space, 2016).

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Monika Schreiber has been the special subject librarian in Jewish studies and Hebrew at Vienna University Library since 1997. Her present research project is focused on the development of the Library’s collection of old Hebrew prints. Since 2014, Monika has also been an active member of the Library’s National Socialist provenance research team and is currently examining the University of Vienna’s historical research and teaching collections of objects and documents. Monika holds a PhD in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Vienna and has published extensively on the Samaritans.

Marje Schuetze-Coburn is Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Feuchtwanger Librarian of the USC Libraries. Schuetze-Coburn has worked at USC for twenty-nine years and has led a number of initiatives to heighten student and public engagement with special collections. She presented a paper titled “The Changing Role of Primary Source Collections at American Research University Libraries” at the 100th annual German Librarian Conference in Berlin. As a special collections librarian, Schuetze-Coburn has assisted scholars and students who are researching German émigrés, written articles about Lion Feuchtwanger and his collection, as well as other German émigré collections, and created several exhibits related to the émigré community in Los Angeles. She co-edited Lion Feuchtwanger’s diaries Lion Feuchtwanger - Ein Möglichst Intensives Leben (Aufbau, 2018), his memoir The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 (USC Libraries, 2010) and Against the Eternal Yesterday: Essays Commemorating the Legacy of Lion Feuchtwanger (USC Libraries, 2009), co-authored Liebschaften und Greuelmärchen: Die unbekannten Zeichnungen von Heinrich Mann (Steidl, 2001), and The Silent Shadow: The Third Reich and the Generation After: An Anthology of Ten Authors (Goethe Institute, 1991). Schuetze-Coburn earned bachelor’s degrees in German and history from UC Berkeley, a master’s of library science and a master’s in history from UCLA. In 2005, she received a Certificate for preservation management from Rutgers University. Amanda Seigel is a librarian in the Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library and co-editor (with Dr. Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage (Syracuse University Press, 2020). Ellen Share holds an MLS degree from the University of Maryland at College Park. She has worked for over 30 years as the librarian at Washington Hebrew Congregation - managing two libraries at the Temple in Washington, D.C. and one library at the Julia Bindeman Suburban Center in Potomac, MD. Ellen is currently on the Board of AJL as SSC Vice-President. She was Co-Chair of 2015 Jubilee Conference held in the Washington, DC area. Gail Shirazi is a librarian in the Israel and Judaica Section in the Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, where she has worked for forty-three years. She specializes in Israeli acquisitions in all formats and languages. She holds an MLS from Catholic University, an MA from Syracuse University (Maxwell School) and a BA in political science from University of Maryland. She enjoys arranging lectures and programs in the community and co-sponsoring events with embassies, academic organizations and Jewish organizations. Avrom Shuchatowitz is a Judaica cataloger at Yeshiva University Library, New York. Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, as well as a Core Faculty member of Drisha Institute. She earned a doctoral degree in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism from Brandeis University and a masters degree in Hebrew Bible from Harvard University. Her first book, The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria was published in 2016, and her second book, Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism, was published in 2018. Dr. Simkovich has recently completed a co-authored commentary to the book of Zechariah with her colleague Leslie Hoppe, which will be published by Liturgical Press in 2020. Hillel Smith is an artist and graphic designer focused on engaging communities with their heritage in innovative ways. He attempts to re-imagine the potential of Judaica by utilizing contemporary media - such as spray paint and digital graphics - to create new manifestations of traditional forms. He has painted several dynamic Jewish murals in Southern California, Atlanta, Israel, and Italy, and has exhibited around the world. Seeing Hebrew as the visual glue that binds Jews together across time and space, Hillel also

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teaches Jewish typographic history, using print as a lens for Jewish life and culture. See his work at hillelsmith.info. Sheryl Stahl is the Director of the Frances-Henry Library at the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She is an active member of AJL and has served two terms each as Vice President of Membership and as Treasurer. She currently serves as the AJL webmaster. This past year, she presented a webinar on behalf of AJL and ALA on cataloging Jewish Sacred texts and another on cataloging Jewish history. When she is not busying herself with library work, she texts her children, reads science fiction, and chases butterflies around her garden. Margo Tanenbaum is a children's librarian with the Los Angeles County Public Library. She received her BA from Pomona College, an MBA from Northwestern University, and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She particularly enjoys putting on book-related programs at her library and has run a social justice-themed family book club, a Girl Empowerment book club, and many successful events based on popular children's book characters. Margo is a Los Angeles native and currently resides in Claremont, CA. Jeremiah Aaron Taub is the Head of the Israel and Judaica Section at the Library of Congress, the Chairperson of the AJL Jewish Fiction Award committee, and the President of the Capital Area Chapter of AJL (AJL/CAC). Under the name Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, he is the author of the short story collection Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018) and six books of poetry, including A moyz tsvishn vakldike volkn-kratsers: geklibene Yidishe lider/A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). His short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Hamilton Stone Review, Jewish Fiction .net, Jewrotica, Oyster River Pages, and Second Hand Stories Podcast. With Ellen Cassedy, he was the winner of the 2012 Yiddish Book Center Translation Prize for Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel (2016). Visit his website at www.yataub.net. Galina Teverovsky has worked at the Library of Congress since 2002, first in the Serial Record Division, then in the Middle Eastern Acquisitions Section. She is currently a Senior Library Technician in the Israel and Judaica Section in the Asian and Middle Eastern Division. She performs acquisitions and cataloging duties and also works closely with the Acquisition Fiscal Support Office. Prior to working at the Library of Congress, Ms. Teverovsky served as a Library Assistant and Teacher’s Assistant at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington. She has resided in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area since her emigration in 1993 from the former Soviet Union. Michaela Ullmann is the Exile Studies Librarian and Instruction Coordinator for Special Collections at the University of Southern California (USC). She is a specialist on the German-speaking Exiles in Southern California and together with her colleague Marje Schuetze-Coburn oversees the USC Feuchtwanger Memorial Library. Michaela holds an MA in library and information science from San José State University, as well as a Magistra Artium degree in cultural anthropology, with minors in classics and protohistoric archaeology from the University of Bonn, Germany. She co-edited Lion Feuchtwanger’s diaries Lion Feuchtwanger - Ein Möglichst Intensives Leben (Aufbau, 2018), his memoir The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 (USC Libraries, 2010) and Against the Eternal Yesterday: Essays Commemorating the Legacy of Lion Feuchtwanger (USC Libraries, 2009) and has written articles about other German-speaking exiles. As the Instruction Coordinator for USC Libraries’ Special Collections, Ullmann’s research focuses on innovative approaches for integrating primary source and archival literacy into the teaching curriculum. She has taught numerous workshops as well as classes at the California Rare Book School on teaching with rare materials. Matthew Vest is the Lead for Outreach and the Music Inquiry and Research Librarian at UCLA. He has also worked in the Music Libraries at the University of Virginia, Davidson College, and Indiana University. Matthew is active in the Music Library Association and the American Musicological Society. His research interests include change leadership in higher education, digital projects and publishing for music and the humanities, and composers working at the margins of the second Viennese School.

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AJLSC Book Bargains 15600 Mulholland Dr. Los Angeles, CA 90077 Sperber Jewish Community Library is offering $5 book bargains and 50 cent records. All proceeds benefit AJL.

Art Kandy 2155 Verdugo Blvd. #609 Montrose, CA 91020 www.artkandy.com From the creators of Every Picture Tells A Story...! Art Kandy offers children's book art, art from classic movies, comics, vintage art and toys and much more. Find your favorite illustrators, too... Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, David Shannon, Garth Williams and many others.

Gealdor Ha'Uman St. 25 Jerusalem, Israel www.gealdor.co.il Gealdor takes libraries to the next chapter. We provide all titles - printed and digital - published in Israel using an advanced order system customized to your library's needs. Stay current, easily purchase books and save money.

Gefen Publishing House 306 West 38 Street New York, NY 10018 www.gefenpublishing.com Jerusalem Books has been supplying libraries round the world since 1981. With our new ownership we are here to serve your library needs.

Jewish Sports Hall of Fame P.O. Box 6697 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 http://scjewishsportshof.com/home.html The SCJSHOF was formally established in January of 1990 by a group of dedicated Southern California sportsmen and sportswomen, organized by former All-America basketball star and Los Angeles Jewish Community Centers sports director Eli Sherman.

KOTAR Klausner 16, Tel Aviv, Israel www.home.cet.ac.il/ The Kotar (Reference) Library is an innovative combination of an online library and a digital work environment, and is the result of cooperation with the leading publishers in Israel. Its goal is to make the leading academic works published over the past half century in Hebrew, available to school students, teachers, and researchers. Kotar will also serve as a unique portal for accurate, in-depth information on topics ranging from Israel studies to Judaics, Jewish history, humanities, social sciences and more, all within a cutting-edge digital work environment

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Media Flex - Opals PO Box 1107 Champlain, NY 12919 OPALS Open-Source Automated Library System is a feature-rich cooperatively developed, Web-based, open source program. This alternative technology provides Internet access to information databases, library collections, eBooks and digital archives. OPALS latest updates untangle eBook management as well as database authentication and access, making it easy to respond to the growing demand for remote access to your library's authentic information resources 24/7.

Mrs. Nelson's Book Fair Company 1648 W. Orange Grove Ave. Pomona, CA 91768 www.mrsnelsons.com Mrs. Nelson’s Book Fair Company was founded in 1986 with the mission of instilling a love of reading in children and their families. With our outstanding selection and excellent customer service, we provide book fairs for preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, private/religious schools, teacher conferences and festivals. We serve the areas of Southern and Central California.

Scholar's Press 6300 West Port Bay Road, Suite 101 Wolcott, NY 14607 www.scholarschoice.com The Scholar’s Choice is a combined exhibit company which markets books on behalf of university & academic publishers. We exhibit at over 100 conferences a year, bringing the latest in scholarship by presses who choose not to exhibit on their own.

Susan Dubin 2160 Twin Falls Drive Henderson, NV 89044 Susan Dubin, author of Katzele and the Silver Candlesticks, will be selling and signing her newest book at a special author’s table.

Temescal Canyon Press 116 Monarch Street Louisville, CO 80027 This is the imprint of poet and writer Henry Rasof. He will be selling and signing his books at a special author’s table.

Three Wishes Publishing 26500 W. Agoura Road Suite 102-754 Calabasas, CA 91302 alvasachs.com Three Wishes Publishing, founded by Alva Sachs, is a creative adventure in children’s literature, which includes five award-winning picture books. Alva will be selling and signing her books at a special author’s table.

Weinberg 248 Kiryat Hatikshoret Neve Ilan, Israel www.aiweinberg.com Established in 1945, A.I. Weinberg Ltd. is a leading supplier of Israeli and Judaica publications for academic institutions and other libraries worldwide.

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The Long Island chapter of

AJL supports AJL.

Mazel Tov on meeting in L.A.

President: Wendy Marx

A library is not a luxury,

but one of the necessities of life.

- Henry Ward Beecher

From the East Coast to the West Coast,

AJL-NYMA

sends its best wishes to all of the

wonderful speakers and participants

at the 2019 AJL conference.