Digital History of the Jews of Boston (DH Jews of Boston) is an accessible and interactive resource for exploring Boston’s Jewish history. The projects to come out of DH Jews of Boston all highlight the ways in which the history of the Jews in Boston is intertwined with that of many other communities in the city. All of the projects on this site have been created–from design to execution–by Northeastern University students.
In the fall semester of 2020, the four students in our intimate inaugural class of HIST 2430, Digital Histories of Ethnic Boston, spent the semester learning to use a range of DH tools and about the history of the Jews and other communities in Boston. With help from the Northeastern University Library Digital Scholarship group and the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks we built this site, Digital History of the Jews of Boston, and launched our first two projects: Mapping Shared Spaces: A Visual History of Boston’s Black and Jewish Communities and Shifting Neighborhoods: How Boston’s Jewish Communities Moved, 1850-2000. Since that time, the site has added new projects built by students in several classes (HIST 1294, Jews in the Modern World, JWSS/PHIL 1285, Jewish Religion and Culture, and HIST 2431, Immigration and Identity in the American Jewish Experience) using a range of digital humanities tools. Digital History of the Jews of Boston now features interactive storymaps, immersive photo essays, data and network visualizations, and an interactive timeline. Following student interest, the site also incorporated projects beyond Boston, such as Baltimore, New York, and American Jewish history more broadly.
As a continuing project, my hope is for DH Jews of Boston to build and expand its exhibits in breadth and depth by continuing to harness the creativity of Northeastern students.
Department of History and Center for Jewish Studies, Northeastern University College for Social Sciences and Humanities
Photos by Shira Weiss and Simon Rabinovitch.