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  • Editor’s Introduction
  • Dianne Ashton

This issue of American Jewish History introduces a new feature that will occasionally appear in its pages. Few American scholarly journals can claim, as we do, a rich history spanning more than 120 years. It seems appropriate, therefore, to invite our leading scholars to reflect upon some of the most significant contributions that the journal has made to the field of American Jewish history. Those reflections will occasionally appear in this journal in a section we will be calling “Signposts: Reflections on Articles from the Journal’s Archive.” We begin the new section with Deborah Dash Moore’s assessment of an article by the late Paula Hyman z”l, that examined the impact of a kosher meat boycott—an article that had a significant impact on our field. A full run of our journal will be available at www.jstor.org. in March, 2015.

This issue also continues our custom of printing the remarks of the winners of the Lee Max Friedman Award, which is presented every other year at the American Jewish Historical Society’s Biennial Scholars Conference in recognition of distinguished service in the field of American Jewish history. Friedman was a past president of the AJHS, which established the award in his name in 1960. A committee of the AJHS Academic Council selects the award recipient based upon his or her research, writing, teaching or support of historical projects. Thirty-three distinguished individuals have received this award. As Riv-Ellen Prell, Chair of the Academic Council, noted at this year’s conference, “The 2014 award is the first one that honors an individual as well as the remarkable organization that she created. It is a particularly great honor . . . to present the 2014 award to Dr. Gail Twersky Reimer, who is the founder of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Both she and an institution that is simultaneously a digital archive, an active agent in researching and writing history, an educational institution, and a producer of documentaries, are being recognized for the extraordinary contribution that the JWA has made to public history, to digital history, to Jewish history and to women’s history.

Gail Twersky Reimer founded the Jewish Women’s Archive in 1995 with the mission to tell the stories, struggles and achievements of Jewish women in North America. Her vision was to do this without bricks and mortar, and instead to create a digital archive which would be accessible anywhere on the planet to anyone who wanted not only to learn about these stories, but ultimately to add to them as well. Gail came to understand early and clearly the democratic possibilities of the virtual world and its implications for writing and learning history. [End Page vii]

With that vision, and the support of a board of trustees, an academic advisory group, and a remarkable staff, the Jewish Women’s Archive has amassed the most extensive collection of material anywhere on American Jewish women. She and her collaborators created an independent organization, without affiliations to other institutions. The importance of documenting women’s lives is crucial not only because these stories should be told, but because the historical record demands it, and the writing of Jewish, women’s, and North American history necessitates it.”

The digital revolution that made the Jewish Women’s Archive possible has moved older, more established archives and historical societies to meet its challenges. Following Reimer’s remarks in this issue, Rachel Lithgow, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, explains new electronic ventures being launched on the AJHS website.

Before turning to those features, however, we offer readers two extraordinary articles. Both address matters of politics, examining the complex and thorny relationships that emerge as social assumptions and power relationships are reworked in times of social change. Laura Arnold Leibman and Sam May explore the ways in which class, gender, race and identity impacted Jewish life in Barbados during the decades surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. Taking a broad view that compares Jewish legal status in Britain with that of its various colonies—a status always entangled in the economic realities of colonial life -— the authors show how and why Jews sometimes opposed proposals...

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