Chronicling history one story at a time
The Temple initiated an oral history project in 2014 to interview members of long standing, making a video of each one. We provide a general list of questions for each interviewee, along with encouraging participants to share personal experiences related to our basic theme: “Living in Northeast Indiana as a Jew.”
As we chronicle this history one story at a time, we are utilizing the raw material to assemble longer video stories in which we blend lots of different personal experiences. To date, we have one completed video, “Growing up Jewish in Northeast Indiana.” Since we continue to interview members, we already have gone back to that first video to insert new material even as we work on producing our second video.
Our thanks and appreciation go to the Dr. Harry W. Salon Foundation for underwriting the initial effort of this project.
The importance of recording these stories grew out of our efforts in developing the Madge Rothschild Resource Center and its Jacob L. Goldman Memorial Museum (under development). The oral histories are another facet of sharing our story, along with the timeline of 200 years of Jewish history that was installed in 2018.