[00:00:00] Welcome to What's New, What's Next. Jewish Studies in the time of the pandemic. My name is Havi Dreifuss and I'm an historian from Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem, both, of course, located in Israel. My topic today is the future of digital research and Jewish studies in the light of these uncertain times. This is, of course, a broad topic. And in this context, we will not be able to address all its aspects. But with your permission, I would like to raise some thoughts and a number of questions stemming from my work as an historian of the Holocaust in Poland. Starting with digital research, I think one can easily point out many advantage it has and may be the most important of them, accessibility, thinking of my teachers as an example, when they were looking for high level materials, they had a long way to go.

[00:00:56] Getting physically to the archive could take hours, ordering the collection and hoping that the correct or correct collection arrives demanded additional time. Now, in those days, documents could not be scanned. Of course, one could show them or just copy them by hand. Obtaining a document took so much time and effort in those and digital times, and if the archives were situated in another country, it would have been even more complicated. And if it was behind the Iron Curtain, it would have been almost impossible. And today, by literally touching one owns keyboard from home and with a cup of coffee, one can move from one archive to another and from one country to another country on a regular basis.

[00:01:45] I am visiting archives in Poland, the United States, as well as Germany in various archives here in Israel.

[00:01:52] I don't need to copy, I don't need to scan. And I have thousands of scanned documents on my computer. A real paradise for historians, isn't it?

[00:02:03] And this accessibility is not limited only to documents, but our ability to obtain research, literature journals in this digital world is also simple. If one uses university libraries as well as order e-books, we really have it all on our own desktop.

[00:02:22] What could be better? Really?

[00:02:26] Well, let's imagine let's imagine the day after the pandemic ends, how many of us will stop visiting our lives, how many of us would be willing to pursue a fully digital work if they are not first to.

[00:02:41] I know I won't.

[00:02:43] Let's be honest, whether we like it or not, the pandemic forced us to become digital researchers. So what are the prices, what do we lose in this online world in terms of archival work? I think we lose a lot and hope is not a natural data base, nor is it a pure reflection of reality. It is a collection of documents. And as strange as it may sound, an archive has its own personality that largely disappears in an online world, just as we are footnotes to just as we often tell students that the most important book that they will find will not be the one that they were looking for in the library, but the one next to it on the shelf. Another thing we lose in this digital world, so are archival documents retrieving a document from a computer largely disconnected from the context of the collection and if anything, trying to move forward and understanding the essence of this collection. It is very difficult to understand it through the computer. Moreover, if we think about an archive and how it was created, we could understand much more what we lose in this digital memory and will not elaborate here. The history of archive, that is how our house was created. I will only mention that our lives have changed dramatically throughout history. And if for centuries an archive was a place that documented primarily a specific circle of power that is a regime or its even she's an example today.

[00:04:30] Things are differently in the modern times. More diverse archives were created archive which preserved and are supposed to serve not only a particular organization or circle of power, but the wide public. And this is, of course, connected to national states and other historical developments. As a result, one can find in today's archives numerous narratives and a wide variety of documents, including personal documentation as well as formal sources and even daily artifacts. The nature or personality of the archive is determined by what was sent to eat, what it collected, what it is to receive and how it was cataloged. It is not an accident. The accidental database, let's take archive is an example today. It's considered as a collection, but it was built as an archive and one can find in it a lot of information, but you cannot find in it everything. At the beginning of its operation, for example, the archive did not collect you didn't delivered the documents or generally once thinking that those organizations will have their archives when the war will end on exhibit members stored what they thought was important to preserve. There are things that there are very collected and there are things that they did not collect through as a supportive policy on small quantities left.

[00:05:59] Of course, Lincoln believed that the archive, like history, should be based on the Jewish people and serve the Jewish people. That's among its members. One can find people from a variety of Jewish circles. And yet this archive has a minority of sources of Bittar movement, for example, and it refers to religious questions, is limited. Despite everybody who built an impressive work on the bottom line, whoever wants to write the history of the Warsaw Ghetto or the Polish Jewry under Nazi occupation will need much more than what is kept in this most important collection and archive. Ringelblum archive, like any other archive, has its biases. Gaps, trends, which you all learn to know when you are working in the archive and not just in each electronic form. Working in a digital form. Not only blur the archives so-called personality, but also equally important prevents us a true communication with the specialist who knows the archives and the librarians who work in those places. I cannot count how many times I visited the archive library of the US UHSSM, of course, in which Vincent Slaid, for example, told me that what I'm looking for is actually in a completely different collection than I thought.

[00:07:30] Or how many times has no normal Malevich from Ghetto Fighters House archive referred me to documents and collections I have not even imagined to search in. The archive is not only a place where we find documents, it is also a place that shapes our research questions and. Ampoule, I'm currently working on the life of Orthodox Jews during the Holocaust, using, among other archives, Gonzales, Kiddush Hashem, an ultra Orthodox archive situated in prayer book. My work is alive and my discussion with its archivist not only added information to my research question, for example, how rabbis were deported with their communities affected or how Orthodox Jews managed to live under false Christian Christian identity. They also raised in those sort of questions, questions I have never thought of before. For example, in pre-war Orthodox society, especially the Hasidic one, the issue of youth separation between men and women was central. I have never thought before to check this principle. If if this principle affected daily life during the Holocaust until I spoke with RFE in Kansas, Kiddush Hashem, and read the document there. But as soon as I began to be sensitive to this aspect, it became clear to me that it was indeed significant to some Jews. For example, a Jew from Warsaw, Warsaw described how in this in the great density that prevailed in the ghetto, their parents, the apartment in which his family lived in, was divided, not according to families. That means not room for each one of the families, but according to men and women, that means some room were only for men want some room were only for. This, of course, shattered the basic essence of family life and had influence on his specific life as well as as well as wider circles. This is a question that never before even crossed my mind.

[00:09:41] Another example is the impact of beards or more precisely, the impact of the disappearance of beards from the public sphere, which I never saw before. What was each influence on the daily life of those Jews as private people and its communities? This is not a technical issue. Archives and libraries not only shape our world of knowledge, but also help us to form our research questions. Wandering through collections of books and of documents inspire our research. When they are incomplete, so is our work. And what about data processing, which is much easier in this digital world, thanks to the digital revolution, we can use a variety of digital tools that have never been that have been developed, such as historical Jewish press website, doesn't have publication in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and many other languages are available and are open to advanced searching tools. If I ever wanted to look, for example, at the white Jewish newspapers reported on the extermination of European Jews, I would have had to sit for hours and days in the National Library and read newspapers today with the help of the Jewish Historical Press site and its OCR. So search the ability to locate relevant articles and perform search within a search is uncommon, is uncomparable. What in the past required countless hours is now done by touching my own keyboard, thanks to the digital world, we have the ability to process data and access sources we never had before. Do those electronic database have any drawbacks, those research enterprises are amazing and allows us, even in routine days, important source to analyze.

[00:11:42] But first of all, none of them are complete. Not all of the sources were scanned and not all of the sources can be searched, but even more. My fear, especially in relation to young researchers, is that some might be formulating a research solely on the basis of those databases. It is so convenient, but it also may reduce research discussions. And this is a key point that is true not only for electronic impressive project. Each of them has the corners segments that were not scanned and not on the network. Sometimes the reason for the Lacuna in project as well as archives are problems of copyrights, but it could also be a question of budget and priority. The priority of the research project in archives are not necessarily matching the interest of the researcher and in small or sometimes simple budgetary problems prevent uploading materials. If there is one thing we can wish for ourselves for the future, it is a mobilization of various bodies for a full scan of those archives, collections and projects that have been difficulties doing so until now. And what about your studies? What happened to it in those uncertain times of the pandemic? What are its benefits and weakness here? Do I wish to start with a notable advantage, the tremendous accessibility, accessibility of information and knowledge that pandemic made, historical knowledge and not only historical knowledge, but including historical knowledge about the Polish Jewry impressively accessible every week, sometimes on the same hours. There are fascinating lectures on the subject. Online conferences and research from all around the world hold most interesting discussion with dozens of people participating.

[00:13:46] The recording, if available, are many time watched by even more people. I think it could be easily shown that many of those Ydwkom Adamic meetings were much smaller in their normative occurrence and in any case could not bring together in such a way such ydwko and so large, low cost people from all around the world, not only the speakers, but also as listeners and as listeners are asking questions and shaping the the themes that are presented in those meetings as well. But what exactly to what extent are those really meetings and discussions and to what extent are there just a series of monologues? I'm asking this question because even before the pandemic, I was asked to prepare a course that is a massive online open course, which I recorded with the help of my university innovation on the platform called Coursera. It is an online course called the Holocaust, an introduction, and it's still available. This course has been online for more than five years and almost a hundred thousand students have used it. This is a number of students. I would have never thought, even if I would have continued teaching until the age of 120. Moreover, those students are coming from all over the globe, including countries which I have never expected. Those are countries which I would have never went there. They would have never visit my my my classes. It gave me. And it's still giving me an opportunity to teach people. I never thought I will meet before.

[00:15:29] But did they really meet them? Did we really communicate?

[00:15:34] Was it a lecture, a monologue or discussion? I'm asking this because this is one thing to have an introduction online course and another thing to have all of your university teaching reduced to a black Zoome Square. And what is their students experience? What can they gain from hours of watching talk at the habit of I'm sorry, what can they gain from sitting and watching for hours talking heads? I'm studying with other people and communicating with them, listening to an academic course, because autism is a very lonely experience, having to learn to speak and explain in that lecture.

[00:16:21] That's a question.

[00:16:23] And this is not the only challenge regarding Jewish studies. You see, we live in the age of information where literally Berdella was information and we can find information about a wide range of topics that in the past only experts could have included, quote. But do we really gain more knowledge or is it we just no less on many more subjects?

[00:16:51] Another question is the following information is accessible, that's true, but is it also credible? Do we have fake history, unfortunately?

[00:17:04] I think we do, and I think that this is a very big problem in those good old times, to be honest.

[00:17:12] What does an average person want to know more about? Something finds information about that field of knowledge. Where does he go? I'm not sure he's looking for the leading professor. I think he would turn to Wikipedia.

[00:17:28] Now, what can be found in the page about topics that concerns us? I want to share with you an exercise I did with my students. This is part of the course. I ask them to check a number of entries in relation to Polish Jews during the Holocaust as they appeared in a variety of languages on Wikipedia.

[00:17:48] There was the results for both most interesting and very said they encountered absolute fake history, and here I'll just refer as an example to the false entry about Kill Warsaw in which more than presumedly two hundred thousand poles were murdered by glass. This, of course, never happened.

[00:18:09] This is a false entry. But parallel to those false entries, there are much more fundamental mistakes beyond the multiple mentions. As an example, above all, logic proportion of all contexts of aid and rescue offered to Jews by Poles. And this is of course, an international and intentional bias. Certain entries are simply wrong. I reject today towards the end of January, twenty twenty one therefore of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in both Hebrew, English, Polish and German. The fighting forces against Nazi Germany are presented not only as jobin déjà vu, the two Jewish fighting organization, but also is occurring in the Polish underground.

[00:18:57] Who's their part in the uprising was most marginal and actually even disconnected of what happened in the ghetto. That someone that's thus someone who does not know the subject might think all of those forces took more or less similar part in the battle. And that, of course, and that, of course, was a battle for most of the Jewish. And so I was aware that someone who does not know the subject might think that all of those forces took more or less similar part in the battle.

[00:19:29] That was, of course, first and foremost the Jewish battle. Moreover, among the commanders of the ghetto uprising in Hebrew, for example, one can find Applebaum, a person who never existed. He was literally invented in English.

[00:19:43] One can find Henry Kovalsky, whose actions are more than questioned in recent updated research. And in Polish, there is another release of partial names. Now, the problem is that many times those entries are based on popular knowledge and not on academic writings, I could add and many more examples of Wikipedia entries and not only concerning the Holocaust, but I think the picture is clear, if I like it or not, or if we like it or not. And despite all problems, people will seek answers in Wikipedia and not on and on Poland museum site or in other institution, professional institution sites. So thanks to the digital times, people know more about Jewish studies, but not necessarily based on the world of knowledge we think of. In other words, sometimes the world of knowledge in digital reality actually undermines the existing knowledge in the field. So what is the future of digital research and Jewish studies in the light of those uncertain times? There is a Hebrew saying may actually have better make does not involve shooting since the destruction of the temple prophecy was given to fools. I do not want to make prophecy, but although it is clear that this is a reality that has been forced on us, I find it hard to believe that when it will end, we will return to the same point we were regarding digital tools before it started. How will university courses look like, will we continue to teach online? We will continue to have online conference and academic meetings. That's a good question.

[00:21:34] Universities are already talking about having online courses and there are many benefits to doing so.

[00:21:40] It enable us to host scholars and more easily and take advantage of the flattering of these flattered, flattering of the global world. People from the United States can be can visit courses in Europe or in Israel and vice versa. We might have a hybrid conference and workshop which will include both face and face to face to face meeting, as well as online or online meetings. And hopefully we might have a wide world effort to scan and open more collections. But I think that we all learn from those uncertain times.

[00:22:18] One of the things that we all learn from those are uncertain times is how much we need a scholar and a teacher and as a human being, the personal contact with our students or colleagues as well as our archives. We're meeting in the archives, libraries and university courses, not only documents and books, but also to friends who challenge our understandings and help us sharpen our insights. So what is the future of the digital research and Jewish studies? I am not sure, but I do know it is in our hands and it is based on our on our soul humanly need to meet you each and every one of you. Thank you very much.

[00:23:17] Thank you for listening to what's new. What's Next. Jewish studies in the time of Pandemic. Check out POLIN Museum's website for new podcasts in the series. For regular updates email GEOP at POLIN dot p l. That's GEOP GEOP at POLIN dot p l. This podcast series is a part of the Global Education Outreach Program supported by Taube Philanthropies, the William K.Bowes Jr. Foundation and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.

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