The Jewish year of 5769 began at sunset of September 29th, 2008. The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is a very reflective holiday, one in which individuals are encouraged to consider their own actions from the past year. It made me wonder what materials are available online to let us glimpse the celebration of Rosh Hashanahs long past.

A search in the Flickr Commons yielded this lovely Library of Congress image of women praying on the Brooklyn Bridge (likely participating in the ritual of Tashlikh).

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Collections & Archives has photos about Rosh Hashanah – including this optimistic card depicting a couple from the Fuerth displaced persons camp flying to Tel Aviv.

Yad Vashem has pulled together selections relating to Rosh Hashanah in an online collection called Marking the New Year.

I also found an assortment of treasures on the Internet Archive:

• A Jewish calendar for sixty-four years from 1838 “detailing the new moons, festivals, and fasts, with the sections of the law as read in the synagogues every Sabbath during the year; also the days on which the hour for commencing Sabbath is altered; together awith the corresponding Christian dates”
• The hymn shown in the image below is from The Jewish year; a collection of devotional poems for Sabbaths and holidays throughout the year (p 137-139),  published in 1898.
• Dated twelve years later is The limits of assimilation : a sermon preached at the Bayswater Synagogue on Rosh-hashana (New Year), October 4th, 5671-1910.

These examples only scratch the surface of the archives and collections that include Jewish records. If this has peaked your interest, here are a few other websites to explore:

• Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives
• American Jewish Committee Archives  (which includes the fabulous little cartoon video celebrating diversity in the 1950s called ‘Here’s Looking at You‘ if I could have figured out how I would have embedded it here – but fair warning – the video/audio starts immediately upon landing)
• The National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting
• Scottish Jewish Archives Centre
• Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives

Know of others I missed – please add them in the comments below!

These sites are from suggestions in the comments:

• Jewish Women’s Archive
• Center for Jewish History

• Encouraging Participation in the Census
  
• Library of Congress Inauguration 2009 Audio and Video Project
  
• Celebrating NASA’s 50th with NASA Images
  
• Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty in the Archival Record and Beyond