Analytical description and research on the personal archive of Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson
The private archive of Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, counting more than 10,000 folios dated from 1890s till the late 1930s. Currently the archive is underresearched and poorly introduced into the academic discourse. The project is aimed at detailed description of the archive. As a result, an electronic database will be constructed, which will make the archive available to the researchers and provide them with a useful tool for conducting academic research on the archive. After that an academic index will be prepared, which will include both the descriptions made and academic articles about the archive.
Jews in Georgia on the threshold of the collapse of the USSR
The project aims to initiate creation of an oral history corpus of Jewry in Georgia for analysis of the identities of Georgian Jewry on the threshold of the collapse of the USSR and the relations of local Jewry with their neighbors. Based on the collected oral history interviews, supported by archival sources, a collective monograph will be published.
The publication with the commentaries of Isaiah Pulner’s ethnographic dissertation "The Jewish Wedding Ceremonies" (1941)
The dissertation of the Soviet researcher in the field of Jewish ethnography Isaiah M. Pulner (1900 – 1942) "The Jewish Wedding Ceremonies" was not completed. The author died in the besieged Leningrad. The dissertation was preserved in the form of its last draft with incomplete author's editing marks. For the publication a number of missing quotes will be restored, the main text will be accompanied by detailed commentaries, appendixes and articles. Historical photographs and works of Jewish painters and graphic artists dedicated to the Jewish wedding will illustrate the monograph.
Godless among Jews, Jews among godless: anti-Judaism and sovietization of the Jewish population in the 1920s and 1930s.
The project focuses on the study of the influence of the anti-religious press on the process of becoming Soviet Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. The analysis of the language of anti-religious periodical press and letters from local correspondents to the editorial office of Bezbozhnik newspaper is in spotlight.
Ribnitzer Rebbe and the town of Rybnitsa (History of the Rybnitsa Jewish community in the Soviet and post-Soviet times)
The main focus of the project is an anthropological study of the Jewish community in Rybnitsa (Transnistria). The aims of our project include the study of local history of the Jewish community in Rybnitsa from the 1930s up to this day. Participants are going to study archival documents, written sources, and use oral materials collected during field research in Rybnitsa and surrounding cities and towns.