LibGuides: Jewish Studies: Primary Resources

Primary Resources -- Step One

The first step in identifying primary source material is to read the bibliographies and scan the footnotes in secondary works on your subject. Read also the preface and acknowledgments: authors often identify particularly useful works, libraries, or archives there.

Some of the types of materials you will use as primary sources are:

1. Newspaper and journal articles written at the time of the events.
2. Personal records, memoirs and diary accounts written by those who witnessed or who participated in the events.
3. Records and publications of governments or governmental agencies involved in the events.

Primary Resource Databases

Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new window
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Subjects: History, Theological Studies, European Studies, Jewish Studies
Description: Research database from Adam Matthew containing full text. Mainly focused on original manuscript collections from the holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Includes personal collections of letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and other materials relating to the late 1600s to the mid-1900s. Also contains chronologies, interactive maps, essays by leading scholars, a selection of American Jewish Year Book articles, a visual resources gallery, biographies, and links to other useful websites.
Contents: Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journal Articles; Primary Sources; Statistics / Datasets
American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (1857-1922) This link opens in a new window
Subjects: History, Sociology, Political Science, Jewish Studies
Description: Primary source collection from ProQuest containing full text. Includes materials from 1857-1922. The American Hebrew was a weekly Jewish newspaper published in New York City & merged with the Jewish Messenger in 1903. The paper covered many topics of Jewish interest internationally.
Contents: Popular (Non-Scholarly) Articles - Newspapers; Primary Sources
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Subjects: MANY
Description: General primary source collection from Readex containing full text. Includes materials from 1690-1922. Mainly focused on the United States.
Contents: Primary Sources; Newspapers
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online This link opens in a new window
Subjects: Women's and Gender Studies, History, African American Studies
Description: Primary source collection from Alexander Street Press containing full text. Includes materials from 1550s-2005. Mainly focused on U.S., Canada, and Europe. Some restrictions on content access depending on repository, like oral histories. Browse by subject, historical event, or personal event.
Contents: Primary Sources
Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new window
Subjects: Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology
Description: Primary source collection from Adam Matthew containing documents, images, and literature. Includes materials from 1800-1920. Mainly focused on the United States.
Contents: Primary Sources
Women's Studies Archive This link opens in a new window
Subjects: Women's Studies
Description: Primary source collection from Gale, covering nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Resources are primarily western focus with limited content from Africa, India, East Asia, and the Pacific Rim. Browse using "Explore Collection" by organization or movement.
Contents:Popular (Non-Scholarly) Articles - Newspapers; Primary Sources; organizational and government documents
Visual History Archive This link opens in a new window
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Subjects: History, Sociology, Political Science, Ethics, Jewish Studies, Peace Studies
Description: Primary source collection containing video testimonies. Mainly focused on Europe, Armenia, China, Guatemala, and Rwanda. Contains more than 55,000 primary source testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.
Contents: Primary Sources; Streaming Video

Online Archives

Jewish Women's Archive
The Jewish Women’s Archive is a national organization dedicated to collecting and promoting the extraordinary stories of Jewish women. JWA explores the past as a framework for understanding the issues important to women today; inspires young people with remarkable role models; and uses Jewish women’s stories to excite people to see themselves as agents of change.
Center for Jewish History
The Center for Jewish History in New York City illuminates history, culture, and heritage. The Center provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
American Jewish Archives
The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), located on the historic Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, was established in 1947 by renowned historian, Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus to collect, preserve, and make available for research, materials on the history of Jews and Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere, including data of a political, economic, social, cultural, and religious nature.
USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive
searchable index and video segment levels made the 112,000 hours of film including witness and survivor testimonies from the Holocaust, Rwandan Tutsi genocide, Armenian genocide, and Nanjing Massacre.
Yivo Institute for Jewish Research
YIVO is dedicated to fostering knowledge of the ongoing story of Jewish life, with a focus on the history and culture of East European Jewry—the ancestry of a significant proportion of Jews in the world today. This story has played an important role in shaping the times we live in.
It’s a story that’s still unfolding and still being told. Scholars continue to uncover new layers of the story in our archives and library, one of the world’s most important resources on Jewish life and history in Europe; Yiddish language, literature, and folklore; the Holocaust; and the American Jewish immigrant experience. We bring you our discoveries, insights, and treasures from our collections through our programs, courses, exhibitions, award-winning publications, and websites.
Jewish Archives Collections (Univ. of Washington)
The collections of the Jewish Archives are physically housed in the Special Collections Division of the University of Washington Libraries. The Jewish Archives are a collaborative project between Special Collections and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society (WSJHS).