{"id":23408,"date":"2017-03-17T03:40:55","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T10:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=23408"},"modified":"2017-03-14T14:00:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T21:00:15","slug":"come-celebrate-our-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/03\/17\/come-celebrate-our-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Come celebrate our history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia archivist Alysa Routtenberg holds a minute book from Victoria\u2019s Congregation Emanu-El, circa 1920. (photo from Alysa Routtenberg)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The documents and artifacts collected, processed and housed by the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia are part of \u201ceveryone\u2019s story,\u201d JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg told the Independent<\/em> in a recent interview. She encouraged people to donate material, join museum walking tours and visit the archives.<\/p>\n

Routtenberg, who was born and raised in Vancouver, did her undergraduate studies in history and art history at the University of British Columbia before heading to Montreal for two years to earn her master\u2019s of library information and archival studies at McGill University. In the summer of 2014, she had the opportunity to work in her field at the JMABC and, when she completed her studies, the museum\u2019s then-archivist, Jennifer Yuhasz, was getting ready to move on and Routtenberg won the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up moving back to Vancouver, and was lucky enough to get this position not that long after I moved back to start my career as an archivist here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Routtenberg\u2019s family has been very involved in historical societies and groups for generations, and she always has loved her family\u2019s library and the study of history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of trips \u2013 like Fort Langley and all sorts of museums and things \u2013 so I always knew I wanted a career in history,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just a matter of figuring out the practicality of what that looked like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The JMABC originally started out as the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia in 1971. Its founding president was Routtenberg\u2019s grandfather, Cyril Leonoff, who passed away last year. Since its beginnings, the museum\u2019s mandate has evolved, but the core objective has stayed the same \u2013 to preserve, collect and share the history of Jewish people in British Columbia.<\/p>\n

The museum and archives makes information \u201caccessible so people can come in and research,\u201d said Routtenberg. \u201cThen, we try to use that material in our public programming, whether that be with walking tours, lectures or physical exhibits. It\u2019s all about celebrating and sharing the history. It\u2019s a fairly short history compared to Jewish people in other provinces, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s any less important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The oldest material in the archives is from 1862 \u2013 from Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria. While not Canada\u2019s oldest synagogue, it is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the country. It\u2019s been open and operational ever since it was started a couple years after Jews first arrived in the province.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were mostly coming up from California during the gold rush,\u201d said Routtenberg of these pioneers. \u201cAnd then, they developed businesses and, within a couple years, wanted to start a synagogue. So, that\u2019s our oldest material. They are pretty special … very beautiful \u2026 handwritten notebooks and things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first Jewish arrivals, she said, \u201cset up businesses where they sold supplies to the guys who were going off panning [for gold]. So, that\u2019s what allowed them to build a community. They built a business, a home, then a synagogue\u2026. A couple guys called themselves wholesalers, selling every kind of supply. And then, as soon as there were actually people staying in Victoria and wanting to live there \u2026 I know there were a couple clothing stores and then a women\u2019s clothing store, specifically, and a fur store … that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

As others did, Jews kept trickling into British Columbia, moving west with the hope of a better life, with more space. In the 1920s and 1940s, the Jewish community got big population boosts and communal groups began to be organized. Some community groups and businesses have now been around for three or four generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were furniture and scrap metal dealers … and we\u2019ve collected a lot of those stories, fortunately, while those people were still with us,\u201d said Routtenberg. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to write a couple of books about them,\u201d she said, referring to the JMABC\u2019s annual journal, The Scribe<\/em>. The museum also publishes a newsletter, The Chronicle<\/em>, twice a year.<\/p>\n

Routtenberg\u2019s job is to collect and preserve all the historical artifacts from the Jewish community, and the artifacts are divided into two major groups.<\/p>\n

One group is family collections, which includes letters, photos, certificates and any other correspondence or paper material a family produced over the years. In that area, the JMABC has many great collections from a range of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were involved with any number of organizations,\u201d said Routtenberg. \u201cWe\u2019ll have their handwritten notes from meetings from the 1950s. We\u2019ll have their letters back and forth with relatives across the country. Those are the sorts of things we have in the family collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second group focuses on community organizations, with collections from the Jewish Community Fund and Council, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Hebrew Free Loan Association, as but three examples. The material in these collections includes correspondence, meeting minutes, agendas, publications they produced, information relating to events, etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very lucky in that most of the synagogues in the city have agreed to donate their materials to us,\u201d added Routtenberg. \u201cWe collect the material related to the synagogue\u2019s administration, meeting minutes, member lists, committee minutes, photos, events and publications.\u201d<\/p>\n

One important aspect of Routtenberg\u2019s job is to reach out to and speak with people and organizations, to explain what it is that the JMABC does, what types of things it collects and, at times, making house calls to help sort materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce materials have been fully processed, everything is in a file and we know exactly what it is, what the dates are, and where to find it,\u201d said Routtenberg. \u201cSo, that\u2019s the main job we do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deal with a lot of research requests as well,\u201d she added. \u201cA lot of people call or email and they are researching their family, asking what information we might have about them. Also, a lot of students, from high school to doctoral students, contact us when they are doing projects and want to know about a theme.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll make notes about those. I\u2019ll try to answer right away, but often it requires some searching. Usually, looking through material in the archives needs to wait for a volunteer to be available or I encourage people to come in themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Routtenberg especially enjoys getting to dig into a box, and she has made some exciting discoveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething I love finding are handwritten letters,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a number of collections in the archives that are very thorough. There\u2019s one that\u2019s [between] a couple who was in Vancouver and Montreal in 1920, and they wrote letters back and forth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey met in Montreal, I believe, and then were secretly engaged for I think six months or so. And they wrote letters everyday, sometimes twice a day, back and forth. It\u2019s those kinds of things that people don\u2019t necessarily think is important, but they tell us so much about what life was like back then \u2013 things they struggled with and thought about. They are just beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The archives are meant to preserve everyone\u2019s history, not just the visible part of the community, stressed Routtenberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t preserve our history, no one else will,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what it comes down to at the end of the day. It\u2019s really easy for people to think they\u2019re not important, that their stuff isn\u2019t important, thinking there is no reason why we would want it. People, all the time, bring stuff from the 1970s and 1980s, and they think it\u2019s not important … but, if we don\u2019t do it now, it never gets to be 150 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we get so many research requests \u2013 we average 650 to 700 per year. These are all people with a wide range of questions wanting to know about the Jewish community. I don\u2019t want to have to sit there and explain something, because I happen to know it \u2013 I want the evidence to back it up, providing the original documents for people to be able to come and look through.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve really been trying to promote community ownership of these archives,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re not this thing to be locked away from the public. They\u2019re really everyone\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, visit jewishmuseum.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia archivist Alysa Routtenberg holds a minute book from Victoria\u2019s Congregation Emanu-El, circa 1920. (photo from Alysa Routtenberg) The documents and artifacts collected, processed and housed by the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia are part of \u201ceveryone\u2019s story,\u201d JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg told the Independent in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6848,5555,6422,4242,6684,130],"class_list":["post-23408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-alysa-routtenberg","tag-archives","tag-british-columbia","tag-history","tag-jewish-museum","tag-jmabc"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}