Jewish diaspora – the DLG B

Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Augusta Jewish Museum’s first collaboration with the DLG and is available here:

Augusta Jewish Museum Collection

The collection contains historical materials dating from 1850 to 2022 that come from a diverse group of Jewish creators, including youth, women, clergy, fraternities, and congregations that offer unique insights into the greater Augusta, Georgia region’s Jewish life, philanthropy, foodways, and experiences.

Rabbi David Sirull of the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue in Augusta emphasizes the importance of making this work accessible freely online.

“It is important that we remember our place in history as we move to the future. The Augusta Jewish Museum allows for valuable content to be procured, preserved, and disseminated that tells the story of Jewish heritage in the Central Savannah River Area that encompasses the Augusta, Georgia area…This content is invaluable to researchers in defining the ways of Jewish life in the Southeast.”

About the Augusta Jewish Museum

The Augusta Jewish Museum and its programming chronicle the life, history, and contributions of the Jewish community in the Central Savannah River Area. The museum also educates about Jewish traditions, remembering the Holocaust, and Israel–the land and its people. Their website is: https://www.augustajewishmuseum.org/.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished by developing, maintaining, and preserving digital collections and online digital library resources. DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project. Visit the DLG at dlg.usg.edu.

Selected images from the collections:

**Title:** Book of Handwritten Poetry, Rosina Hendricks Levy **URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2019-003-010 **Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection **Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum** **Description:** Paper-bound book of poetry bound with twine into a single volume, handwritten pages. Rosina’s Book of Poetry is an essential part of local Jewish history as a rich, female, first-person perspective of the beginning of the Jewish congregation in Augusta. Rosina Hendricks, daughter of the first Jewish family who arrived in Augusta in 1802, authored this book that remains unpublished. Written throughout her adult life, the book includes poems written to her husband and children, on life in Georgia and the South, and on Judaism and her experiences as a Jewish woman. She played a key role in establishing the religious school that would eventually become the Congregation Children of Israel.

**Title:** “United for Worship and Charity” by Jack Steinberg
**URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2022-005-004
**Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
**Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum**
**Description:** Staple-bound booklet about the history and community of Congregation Children of Israel, authored by Jack Steinberg

**Title:** Daughters of Israel Cook Book, page 8 of 88
**URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2021-054-001
**Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
**Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum**
**Description:** Synagogue Cookbook (1950s), Paper spiral bound with plastic spine, published by the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue’s (AYS) Daughters of Israel.

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Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday) from the Digital Library of Georgia this Shavuot.

From Sunday, May 16 to Tuesday, May 18, Jewish people worldwide observe the holiday of Shavuot fifty days after the first day of Passover. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.

The word “Shavuot” means “weeks.”

Across the Jewish diaspora, the holiday is celebrated by going to synagogue to hear the Ten Commandments, having festive meals of dairy foods, which may include cheesecake, blintzes, or kugels, and reading the Book of Ruth.

The Jerusalem Post just published an article by the writer David Geffen on this holiday. Geffen notes that the Daily News and Herald (Savannah, Ga.) and the Atlanta Georgian and News both refer to the holiday as “The Feast of Weeks,” and explores the initiation of confirmation in Reform Jewish temples in the United States. These confirmations were held on or around Shavuot. The article also includes engaging photographs held by The Breman Museum in Atlanta. Both articles represent Georgia’s established Jewish communities in Savannah and Atlanta.

The two newspaper articles, available through the DLG’s Georgia Historic Newspapers site are here: