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modern-day Mikveh Israel are
the synagogue board meeting
minutes. Reading minutes
from a 1782 board meeting,
Gabbai came across a familiar
mixture of camaraderie and
rancor, serious discussion and
idle chatter.

“It’s a mirror of today,”
Gabbai said.

Th e project, entitled “Digitizing
the Records of Philadelphia’s
Historic Congregations: Providing
Documentation for the Political,
Social and Cultural Developments
in Philadelphia,” kicked off with a
$385,205 grant from the Council
on Library and Information
Resources to the Christ Church
Preservation Trust in 2018.

It is concerned with the
digitizing and transcribing the
records of Christ Church, St.

George’s Methodist Church,
Gloria Dei, African Episcopal
Church of St. Th omas, Episcopal
Dioceses Archives, Presbyterian
Historical Society, St. Peter’s
Episcopal Church, American
Baptist Historical Society and
Mikveh Israel. Th e documents
collected within the archive of
each house of worship span the
early 18th century to the late
19th century.

Within the records that
concern Mikveh Israel, scanned
documents include a 300-page
seating ledger covering 1857-1866,
letters from Rebecca Gratz, nearly
500 pages of charitable contribu-
tion receipts and even meeting
minutes from 1782-1791, which
records the synagogue’s founding.

Some of the documents have
been transcribed in full, some
are being chipped away at and
others remain untouched. Christ
Church Preservation Trust seeks
to digitize and transcribe just
over 41,000 pages.

Th e goal, according to Carol
Smith, an archivist at the trust,
is to provide an easily acces-
sible resource to scholars and
the public alike, each of whom
may fi nd their own interest
piqued by, say, where Haym
Solomon sat in Mikveh Israel,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM or what’s contained in George
Washington’s letter to the
synagogue. Some could even use
the archive to add detail to their
understanding of their ancestors.

That the project is an
ecumenical undertaking, Smith
said, is a deliberate refl ection
of the character of the archives
that she and her colleagues are
seeking to make accessible.

Smith said. Th at community
has only grown during quaran-
tine, as the number of people
with enough time on their
hands to try and parse two
century-old handwriting has
risen. About 3,000 pages have
been transcribed since March
by volunteers from across the
country. Still, much remains to be
centuries about social hierar-
chies of the day.

Margolis Chesner said the
fact that diff erent languages
are used by diff erent record-
keepers — English, Hebrew
and even Dutch — can tell
researchers something about
the community’s makeup.

“What are the tensions that
are going on? Are there tensions
What are the tensions that are going on? Are there tensions because
people are coming from all over the place? Are there tensions because
some people want to move toward a more progressive practice, or more
toward a religious practice? It really gives you a snapshot into the
religious life of the community.”
MICHELLE MARGOLIS CHESNER
“We know that Benjamin
Levy [a prominent Mikveh
Israel congregant of its early
period] contributed to the
building of the steeple of Christ
Church,” Smith said. “I want
to see if we can’t try to fi nd
more of those cross references
between the congregations.”
The archives of each
individual congregation are
too great for a small team
to digitize and transcribe
on their own and, thus, the
project farms out some of
the transcription to a “robust
community” of volunteers,
transcribed. According to scholars in the
fi eld of American Jewish history
familiar with the project, such a
rich, detailed archive of a single
community like Mikveh Israel
can yield important fi ndings
for researchers. Knowing where
community members rented
their seats within the synagogue,
according to Michelle Margolis
Chesner, Norman E. Alexander
Librarian for Jewish Studies at
Columbia University, is more
than a matter of one’s preferred
sight line to the bimah. It can
send a signal through the
University of Pennsylvania’s
Herbert D. Katz Center for
Advanced Judaic Studies, fi nds
much to consider in the records
of Mikveh Israel’s confl icts, but
plenty in its mundanities, too.

Membership structures and
seating arrangements are a rich
vein for contemporary histo-
rians grasping to understand
the social dynamics at play in a
bygone era.

“It’s a really incredible social
history that’s not only inter-
esting to social historians or
religious historians,” Kiron said,
“but to people interested in the
history of their community —
genealogists, family historians.”
Smith, like Kiron, believes
that the archive has much to
off er the general public. She
said that her team hopes to
produce lesson plans that will
guide students and teachers
through the archive.

Gabbai, too, believes that
the archive has utility to his
congregation, distinct from
what it provides researchers.

Th e synagogue’s history, he said,
is “one of its very important
assets.” “If we did not have that
history,” Gabbai said, “we’d be
like any other synagogue.” ●
because people are coming from
all over the place? Are there
tensions because some people
want to move toward a more
progressive practice, or more
toward a religious practice? It
really gives you a snapshot into
the religious life of the commu-
nity,” Margolis Chesner said.

And she added the one important
takeaway from any synagogue
archive, Mikveh Israel included:
“You realize, fi rst, that synagogue
confl ict is eternal.”
Arthur Kiron,
the Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
of Judaica Collections at the 215-832-0740
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