{"id":174354,"date":"2025-05-06T11:57:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T08:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=174354"},"modified":"2025-05-15T11:39:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T08:39:35","slug":"yesterdays-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/yesterdays-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Yesterday\u2019s News: The Story of the Historical Jewish Press Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the day that marked the official founding of what would one day be called the National Library of Israel, the residents of the Land of Israel were consumed by alarming rumors of a deadly disease spreading from distant Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the city of Saratov, doctors were said to be burying patients alive\u2014so claimed a \u201ctelegram\u201d reported in the Hebrew newspaper HaZefirah<\/em>. The rumors triggered violent riots that left a number of people dead. Meanwhile, another Hebrew paper – HaHavatzelet<\/em> – expressed concern over a new \u201cinspection order\u201d imposed by the Ottoman authorities on ships arriving \u201cfrom Russia to Togarmah\u201d (at the time, Turkey was often referred to as \u201cTogarmah\u201d by some members of the Jewish community in the Holy Land\u2013 M.Z.), and over the quarantine enforced on the ports of Acre and Haifa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, not everything that day\u2014July 15, 1892\u2014was doom and gloom. The same issue of HaHavatzelet<\/em> also reported the opening of the Midrash Abarbanel Library, a small institution that would one day evolve into the National Library of Israel. There was even a report on the construction on the Jaffa\u2013Jerusalem railway, which was making “great strides” according to the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Zefira\"
The front page of the July 15, 1892 edition of HaZefirah<\/em><\/a> mentioned, among other things, the arrival of the Russian Imperial family at Peterhof Palace, people being buried alive in Sartov due to a deadly disease, as well as the spread of yellow fever in Mexico, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

All of this information doesn\u2019t come from a scholarly monograph or a rummage through a dusty archive\u2014it\u2019s the result of a quick, casual search on a smartphone. The source? The Historical Jewish Press website<\/a>, launched 20 years ago by the National Library of Israel in collaboration with Tel Aviv University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spanning 250 years, containing millions of newspaper pages in nearly every language Jews have spoken or written, the site gathers it all in one place\u2014accessible to everyone, thanks to cutting-edge digital tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the Historical Jewish Press website is the largest digital collection of Jewish newspapers in the world. It offers a wide-ranging, richly textured view of Jewish and Hebrew life over the past two and a half centuries. Whether you’re a serious researcher looking for information on historical figures or events, or simply curious about what dish soap Israeli housewives were using the day you were born\u2014you can open your phone or computer and take a look back in time. Here, we invite you behind the scenes of this remarkable project.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Nli1896\"
An 1896 report on the recent establishment of the Midrash Abarbanel Library, today’s National Library of Israel. From the April 10, 1896 issue of The Australasian Hebrew<\/a><\/em>, the Historical Jewish Press Collection, the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It\u2019s the late 1960s. A 17-year-old boy walks beneath the scorching Jerusalem sun along Keren Kayemet Street, his mind preoccupied with the existential dilemmas of the State of Israel. There were the ever-present external threats, the ones everyone was always talking about. But there was also another issue\u2014less spoken of, but which he saw daily in his own neighborhood of Nahalat Achim: the ethnic divide of Israeli society. It would take years before people began discussing it openly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That boy was Yaron Tsur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he is known as Professor Emeritus Yaron Tsur, Israel Prize laureate. But let\u2019s not jump ahead just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsur was born just over a month after the State of Israel was founded, into what he calls a \u201cmixed\u201d family: a German-born yekke<\/em> father, whose last name was so difficult for immigration clerks to pronounce that it was quickly changed to \u201cTsur,\u201d and a Yemenite mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

East and West met, naturally, in the Land of Israel. The cool-headed yekke<\/em> was riding his bicycle through the city when a dark-haired young woman appeared in his path. He fell\u2014literally\u2014off his bike and onto the sidewalk. Over time, that fall took on a deeper symbolic meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were a couple of lovebirds\u2014completely in love,\u201d Tsur told us in an interview at his Tel Aviv home, following the Israel Prize announcement. \u201cThere was a lot of love in our home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That home, where he grew up, was an apartment in a building owned by his grandfather, David Ben Shalom. It was there that he developed the unique worldview that would later define his academic and intellectual work.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Screenshot
Kindergarten in Jerusalem\u2019s Nahalat Achim neighborhood, where Tsur grew up. From the Ruth Ushpiz\u2013Hamdi Levi Collection, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi. This item<\/a> is part of the Archive Network Israel Project, made accessible thanks to the collaborative efforts of Yad Ben Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

David, Tsur\u2019s grandfather, had been a blind child with no real prospects for the future\u2014until he was taken in by the founders of Jerusalem\u2019s \u201cSchool for the Blind.\u201d There, he learned trades like basket weaving and met Sarah, who would become his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their early years together, the couple could afford little more than tomatoes\u2014at least according to Sarah\u2019s stories to her grandchildren. But things eventually stabilized. They bought a plot of land, built a home, and over time expanded it into a rental building that provided them with an income. Their tenants were immigrants from all over the world, and the building was managed with a firm but fair hand by its two \u201cgreat patriarchs\u201d: Mizrahi owner David Ben Shalom and his Ashkenazi tenant, Dr. Sternbach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd yet,\u201d Tsur says, recalling his feelings as a child of mixed heritage, \u201cI never felt entirely at ease. I sensed something in the air\u2014something between those Ashkenazis, the white people, and the brown and black people. Nothing openly hostile ever happened to me. I was never directly harmed by what would later be called \u2018the ethnic issue.\u2019 Because my father was a yekke<\/em>, we were classified as Ashkenazi despite my mother\u2019s background. But I remember that atmosphere\u2014and I remember how much it weighed on me, even back then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the issue deeply occupied his thoughts, Tsur had no real way to act on it. So life moved on. He studied music, joined the IDF\u2019s Intelligence Corps, was discharged, and began writing radio dramas for children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was only in the 1970s that the issue resurfaced\u2014this time in an academic context.
Tsur began teaching at the newly established Open University and was assigned the introductory course on modern Jewish history. Though he lacked formal academic training in the field at that time, he had an enormous store of knowledge from years of intensive reading\u2014and an unmistakable passion for the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To his dismay, he discovered that more than five-sixths of the course focused almost entirely on Ashkenazi Jewish history. What had happened to the Jews of Islamic lands before their arrival in Israel? That vast history was relegated to a single sixth of the curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Tsur looked for source material to help correct the imbalance, the situation only became more frustrating. He turned to the Jewish National and University Library (as the National Library was known at the time) and was given a towering stack of Ashkenazi-focused bibliographies\u2014alongside a meager, almost negligible pile representing everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, he created what didn\u2019t exist. He wrote new educational materials himself\u2014some of which would later be used by Israel\u2019s Ministry of Education\u2014or turned to fiction, like the novels of Albert Camus, to teach students about life in North Africa. The students, it turned out, were far more engaged by Camus than by standard academic texts.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Screenshot
Yaron Tsur\u2019s book Kehila Kruah<\/a> <\/em>[“A Torn Community”, Hebrew], on Moroccan Jewry<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It was only natural that the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa would become the central focus of Yaron Tsur\u2019s academic career. His graduate and doctoral work both explored the history of Tunisian Jewry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990s, Tel Aviv University became his academic home base. There, he led the “The Jews of Islamic Countries \u2013 Archiving Project.” Under his direction, the project gathered an extensive collection of source materials, including historic newspaper issues and writings by Jewish intellectuals from the Maghreb\u2014some in Judeo-Arabic, others in Hebrew, and occasionally even in periodicals published in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, July 28, 2004, Orly Simon, who today is head of the Library Processes Division at the National Library, received an email from an unfamiliar academic. It began:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDear Sir or Madam, I would appreciate it if this message could be forwarded to your project director. My name is Dr. Yaron Tsur. I teach in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and head the Jews of Islamic Countries Archiving Project. I believe the projects we are working on could be excellent candidates for collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the National Library had just launched its \u201cHebrew Press\u201d website\u2014an early digital initiative that offered scanned pages of pioneering Hebrew newspapers: the publications of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and other Hebrew- and Zionist-oriented newspapers from the diaspora, such as HaZefirah<\/em>, HaMagid<\/em>, HaLevanon<\/em>, HaHavatzelet<\/em>, and others. The site did not yet support full-text search; users could browse scanned pages but not search the content itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, at Tel Aviv University, Tsur was overseeing a project that had digitized historical editions of The Palestine Post<\/em> using new technology that could recognize and index text. Connecting the two efforts was the first step toward what would eventually become the Historical Jewish Press website\u2014today home to millions of newspaper pages in dozens of languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collaboration proved fruitful. Though naturally, there were challenges\u2014technical, logistical, and cultural\u2014they were overcome with determination and good will. Tsur began commuting twice a week to the basement of the National Library in Jerusalem, while Simon recalls making trips to Tel Aviv carrying hard drives packed with precious data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, the two sites operated side by side. Material digitized by the Library was shared with the Tel Aviv University website, and vice versa. Over time\u2014and after carefully navigating political and institutional sensitivities\u2014the decision was made to unify efforts. A single, independent, shared platform was created: the Historical Jewish Press site, also known occasionally as JPress<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Detroitisrael\"
Big and small moments from across the Jewish world\u2014in every language. The cover of The Dertoit Jewish Chronicle, <\/em>May 14, 1948<\/a>, announcing the founding of the State of Israel, the Historical Jewish Press Collection, the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The obstacles were formidable, spanning multiple areas of expertise: new and unfamiliar digital tools; fundraising from foundations; complex legal questions regarding intellectual property; and, perhaps most challenging, reaching out to rights holders\u2014from the publishers of major newspapers to descendants of obscure and long-defunct ones\u2014and persuading them, in many languages and with creative arguments, to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teams from both institutions\u2014the National Library’s representatives and the Tel Aviv group working alongside them\u2014operated in full partnership. As lead historian, Tsur directed the editorial and curatorial side, including the search for new, historically significant titles to add to the archive.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Whatsapp
Israel Weiser at work, in the old National Library building, photo: Hanan Cohen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Projects of this kind require a special kind of devotion\u2014and the Library had just the person: Israel Weiser z\u201dl. For many years head of the Library\u2019s photography department, Weiser joined the project wholeheartedly. He took on one of its most tedious but critical tasks: bibliographic completion. He traveled the globe photographing Hebrew manuscripts, delving into Jewish archives and libraries in pursuit of, say, issue no. 67 of an obscure American-Jewish newspaper missing from the Library\u2019s holdings. He worked page by page, issue by issue, building the archive with care and precision. The exceptional quality and depth of the collection owe much to his efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, there were also ideological debates along the way. Should the focus be on Hebrew newspapers\u2014those published in Eastern Europe and later in the Land of Israel? Or, as Tsur envisioned, should the project embrace Jewish press from across the globe, in every language and from every community\u2014without bias or hierarchy? In Tsur\u2019s view, even the most obscure corners of Jewish publishing deserved a place in the collection.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Screenshot
The oldest issue of HaMe\u2019assef,<\/a><\/em> from October 1783<\/a>, preserved in the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In the end, that broader vision prevailed\u2014though the early Hebrew newspapers received special attention. One of the crown jewels of the collection is HaMe\u2019assef<\/em>, the journal of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in late 18th-century Germany. The first generation of Haskalah thinkers became known as the \u201cMe\u2019assefim,\u201d after the journal. The oldest issue in the Library\u2019s collection dates to 1783.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, the new unified site was launched quietly (a more public celebration would follow three years later). By then, the archive already featured over 400,000 newspaper pages. The eventual addition of major Israeli newspapers like Davar<\/em> and Maariv<\/em> marked a turning point. Today, the site includes millions of pages from Jewish newspapers around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Historical Jewish Press website has become one of the most important resources available for the study of Jewish life across time and geography. It provides access to rare and once-inaccessible newspapers, preserving the voices of communities large and small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in the National Library\u2019s Digital Department, we also rely on this archive constantly as a foundational tool for our own research and storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to try it yourself? Head over to the Historical Jewish Press search engine<\/a>\u2014and begin your own journey through the headlines of yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Yaron Tsur\u2014one of the founders of the NLI\u2019s Historical Jewish Press website\u2014has been awarded the Israel Prize. The honor recognizes, among other achievements, his role in helping create one of the National Library\u2019s most significant initiatives. This is the story behind the Historical Jewish Press – a project that allows anyone, anywhere to explore nearly every Jewish newspaper published over the last 250 years\u2014and embark on a captivating journey through Jewish history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":173936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[1232,1536,1648,2192,1633],"tags2":[3067,2656,2651,2813,2639,2792],"class_list":["post-174354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-land-of-israel","tag-history-of-israel","tag-jewish-culture","tag-newspapers","tag-north-african-jewry","tag-sephardic-jewry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nYesterday\u2019s News: The Story of the Historical Jewish Press Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Professor Yaron Tsur\u2014one of the founders of the NLI\u2019s Historical Jewish Press website\u2014has been awarded the Israel Prize. 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