The Grayzel Digital Collections

A Platform that Curates and Deepens Jewish Texts and Wisdom in an Accessible, Easy-to-Use Format

Jewish Literacy in the Digital Age
Our goal is to convene conversations around content. Gratz is eager to launch Grayzel, a new digital platform to curate and share the breadth of Jewish Wisdom pertaining to Modern Jewish History and Culture. In the spirit of historian and longtime Gratz professor, Solomon Grayzel, the online platform will democratize Jewish learning through the production of a state-of-the-art web platform and a modular database full of texts, images, videos, and sounds that capture the complexities of the Jewish experience in the modern world. 

"First, comprehensive Jewish education is crucial. How can we reformulate Jewish thinking if we don’t know the texts and history on which it is based? If Judaism is going to play a role in our new world, we must know what Judaism is. Second, this expansion and deepening of Jewish education must take place in an environment in which metaphysical conversations are encouraged and rewarded. There was a time when being conversant with the realm of ideas was a prerequisite for leadership. We need to re-create that world. Jews famously value intellect and study; this is surely a cultural change that Jews can lead." 
— Andrés Spokoiny, "A Maimonides for the Age of AI." SAPHIR (AUTUMN 2023)

Scalable Collaboration
A number of Jewish organizations and universities have created digital repositories, often embedding their collections in rigid online catalogues. The entries for the digital materials are hard to distinguish from the general library catalog. In addition, the materials are siloed from resources available on other websites. The Grayzel platform will be designed with the user in mind and launched in collaboration with other collecting partners and materials from a cross-section of repositories.

AI-Powered Curation
Jewish educators require a powerful tool to drive content-driven learning. They should also be empowered to harness machine-learning to navigate Jewish wisdom. The Grayzel team will work with AI and subject matter experts to navigate Grayzel's content and support users who desire deeper and further guidance on how to best utilize the platform's repositories. Once beta-tested and launched, a group of early adopters and general users will also be encouraged to share how they used materials for the benefit of future users and educational experiences.

Access and Audience 
Grayzel will be freely accessible, meant as a digital tool to help educators teach; students explore; researchers create; and people of all backgrounds discover the content of Jewish Wisdom. All modules will be viewable in their original language and presented with descriptions, critical metadata, and in English translation. In public schools and traditional and informal Jewish educational settings, Grayzel will emerge as an indispensable tool to engage in substantive dialogue. Scholars will also benefit from a central database of materials, in partnership with other agencies and archives, rather than clicking into dozens of siloed online repositories. 

Collecting Priorities 
Grayzel will prioritize three fields: American Jewish history and culture; the Holocaust and Jewish life in prewar Europe; and Judaism’s contribution to social justice. These priorities match the urgent subjects that students seek from Gratz’s degree programs.  

The Josephine Cohen American Judaica Project is home to the Rebecca Gratz Correspondence, the in-process Jewish Exponent Image and Clippings Archive, and all future materials and modules pertaining to American Jewish life.

The Barbara and Fred Kort Holocaust Geniza Project features the Elie Wiesel Archive, the Holocaust Oral History Archive, and the unique materials of Dr. Lena Allen-Shore, a Holocaust survivor, philosopher, artist,and pioneering Holocaust educator. 

Gratz College is honored to carry on its patrons’ legacies through these windows into the Jewish past and deeply informed by Jewish wisdom.

Led by Dr. Alison Joseph, Grayzel’s inaugural projects include:

• Elie Wiesel Digital Archive

• Rebecca Gratz Correspondence 

• Gratz Holocaust Oral History Archive 

• Lena Allen-Shore Papers 

• Eric Mandell German Music Collection

The collections selected for Phase 1 curation feature urgent materials and artifacts that illustrate the role of Jews and Judaism to uplift, in the words of writer and philosopher, Lena Allen-Shore, human potential. In particular, the Elie Wiesel Digital Archive possesses hundreds of correspondence, recordings and manuscript drafts of one of the twentieth-century's most important human rights champions and the Jewish people's most eloquent champion of Holocaust education and social justice. Wiesel's archives add a critical new dimension to his legacy as a Holocaust survivor through the international role of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in convening U.S. presidents, diplomats, Nobel laureates, and other changemakers to stand up against hate. 

Among the forthcoming digital collections are the Maurie Orodenker American Antisemitica Collection, and the Jewish Exponent Clipping and Image Archive, and private collections focused on the religious histories of Jews in the United States and Europe. 

Data-Driven Dashboarding    
As she works with web developers to furnish Grayzel, Dr. Joseph and the Gratz team are eager to learn from user experiences. With methodical cataloging and coding techniques, the thousands of modules available on Grayzel will no doubt produce imagined conversations on myriad subjects. Users will curate their own cultural experience, exploring, for instance, Jewish-Christian engagement through Rebecca Gratz’s letters about church sermons in Victorian America, Lena Allen-Shore's letters to Pope John Paul II in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, and, of course, Elie Wiesel’s stewardship on behalf of human rights in the final decades of the twentieth century. Grayzel will help users anticipate these links and gather user-data to support future students, teachers, and scholars find meaningful materials in their personal pursuits of Jewish Wisdom. 

Timeline 
Grayzel is an ambitious multiphase project. Phase 1 is focused on furnishing the web platform and the all-important Elie Wiesel Papers. Gratz is partnering with Israel-based web developers, Gizra, to produce the Grayzel database and platform. The new website will be ready for beta-testing with the Grayzel advisory board and a roster of early adopter agencies. Gratz College will formally launch Grayzel in Spring 2025.  

Further development will include the creation of virtual exhibits, display of student projects based on Grayzel archival content, integration into Gratz College courses, and additional archival acquisitions. 

HOW TO SUPPORT

• Launch Grayzel
  The budget for the Phase 1 launch is $900,000. With the support of the Claims Conference, the German Government’s Office of Foreign Affairs and private donors, Gratz has secured $700,000. Help us close the gap so we can launch Grayzel in 2025!
• Invest in Next Level Grayzel  (2025 and beyond)​
  Provide a multi-year gift to support the acquisition of new collections and technology to create data visualizations, mapping tools, and other state of the art archival research tools. ​
• ​Endow Grayzel
  Honor or remember someone important to you with a major naming gift.

To learn more about Grayzel Digital Collections and how you can contribute to it, contact Naomi Housman, Director of Institutional Advancement (nhousman@gratz.edu or 215-635-7300 x126).

SPONSORS