28 | SEPTEMBER 19 • 2024 
J
N

T

he Detroit Jewish News 
Foundation has completed 
an important initiative 
with the National Library of Israel 
(NLI). It is a project that has a 
direct impact on Detroit’s Jewish 
community, and 
the results are that 
the essential history 
of Detroit’s Jewish 
community is now 
preserved at the 
NLI as well as in the 
William Davidson 
Digital Archive of 
Jewish Detroit History. 
The Davidson Archive holds the 
historic pages of The Detroit Jewish 
Chronicle (1916-1951) and The 
Detroit Jewish News (1942-present). 
In addition to preserving these 
publications, the NLI has also 
digitized copies of the Detroit-based 
Jewish American (1901-1911). 
The project began when, as 
a participant in the Detroit 
Jewish Federation’s 2023 Motor 
City Mission to Israel, I made 
arrangements with Rachel Neiman, 
the NLI’s International Media and 
Public Relations specialist, for a 

visit to the NLI’s archive. She gave 
me a fantastically warm welcome, 
and arranged meetings with Dr. 
Yochai Ben-Ghedalia, director of 
the Central Archives for the History 
of the Jewish People; Shai Ben-Ari, 
editor of English-language Digital 
Content; Dr. Zvi Leshem, recently 
retired director of the Gershom 
Scholem Collection of Kabbalah and 
Hasidism; Rachel Misrati, Archives 
Department & External Exhibitions; 
and Eyal Miller, manager of the 
Library’s Historical Jewish Press 
Collection (Jpress). 
The NLI is the equivalent of 
our nation’s Library of Congress 
but with a global collecting scope. 
It also has extensive archival 
collections. The Library’s Archives 
Department holds over 1,000 
personal archives that document 
“outstanding Jewish personalities 
from a wide variety of spheres: 
writers and poets, humanists, 
rabbis, Zionist leaders, scientists, 
journalists, critics and others.” 
For example, it preserves 
documents from Maimonides and 
Sir Isaac Newton, exquisite Islamic 
manuscripts dating back to the 9th 

century and the personal archives 
of leading cultural and intellectual 
figures such as Martin Buber, Natan 
Sharansky, Naomi Shemer and 
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. 
Since I’m the Alene and Graham 
Landau Archivist for the Detroit 
Jewish News Foundation, I was 
particularly intrigued by the Jewish 
Press Collection. Manager Eyal 
Miller describes its mission: “We 
aim to collect all of the Jewish 
press that was and still is printed 
and published. We not only wish 
to collect these publications; we 
also want to make them available 
for people to use; for the professor 
writing a history book, for the 
student writing a seminary paper, 
for a high school teacher preparing 
for class and for people interested in 
their family’s or town’s local history.”
This is a daunting endeavor that 
affects the entire global Jewish 
community. Miller explains: “This 
is no easy task, but we are not 
afraid of hard work. We scan these 
newspapers and put them up on 
our website where they are fully 
searchable. By mid-2024, we have 
scanned and made available more 

than 5 million pages from 800 
different publications at www.nli.
org.il/en/discover/newspapers.”
The library itself holds a 
vast collection of books, audio 
recordings, photographs, portraits, 
music, posters and many other 
mixed media archival records in a 
variety of languages. 
Miller described his perspective 
on the Jewish press collection in 
an email: “I believe (an unbiased 
belief, of course!) that the NLI’s 
newspaper and periodical collection 
surpasses them all in its importance 
and relevance. We have Jewish 
dailies, weeklies, monthlies, 
quarterlies, one-timers, annual 
publications published basically 
in every place you can think of 
(from the USA to Australia, from 
South Africa to Morocco, from 
Russia to England, from Brazil 
to Malaysia and many more), in 
whatever language you can imagine 
(English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, 
Russian, Romanian, Persian, 
Swedish and Arabic, to name just a 
few) and from all Jewish sects and 
communities.” 
Regarding the project with 
the Jewish News Foundation, 
Miller said, “One of the recent 
and important additions to 
our site were the Detroit-
based newspapers: The Jewish 
American, The Detroit Jewish 
Chronicle and the Detroit Jewish 

Our Partnership with the 
National Library of Israel

OUR COMMUNITY

Mike Smith
Alene and 
Graham Landau 
Archivist Chair

HERZOG & DE MEURON

