Did you attend the Hebrew College Academic Convocation of November 27, 1951? Or were you one of the lucky ones who got to hear David Ben-Gurion speak at Hebrew College on May 16 of that year, when the College was still in Roxbury? Then two rare recordings of those events will stir some memories.
For 58 years, two acetate records made of the two events lay forgotten in the College library. Then, in fall 2009, they were digitized and put online for all to enjoy, at the Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive (DJSA), the world's leading Internet site for recordings of Jewish interest, at www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa.
The Academic Convocation recording includes an invocation by Rabbi Israel Kazis, a Hebrew and English address by Professor Nisson Touroff, and remarks and award of degrees by Dean Eisig Silberschlag. The Ben-Gurion recording includes a speech by the Grand Old Man and words of welcome, in Ivrit, by Abraham Yanover, president of the student body.
These two records are just part of a remarkable joint endeavor by the Dartmouth College Jewish Sound Archive and the Hebrew College Rae and Joseph Gann Library to digitize the library's entire collection of 1400 vinyls and 78s and place them on the DJSA's web site. This web site already offers over 13,000 tracks of Jewish music and the spoken word, including hazanut, folksong, humor, storytelling, documentaries and loads more, much of it in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, as well as several other languages. Many of these albums have been donated by individuals from across the U.S. One quarter of the Hebrew College collection is already online, and the rest is waiting in the queue.
Since 2002, students and scholars from around the world (and, of course, from Hebrew College's cantorial program) have been logging on to the DJSA, to search, to listen, to view the labels and to read the record sleeves close up. What makes this such a valuable resource for study, as well as sheer enjoyment, is that it is fully searchable--by title, composer, lyric source, occasion (e.g. Yom Kippur, Tu B'Shvat), and so on. The key to this is a simple but sophisticated transliteration system that overcomes the anarchic spelling of Hebrew and Yiddish words.
You can access the DJSA directly from the Hebrew College campus. From off campus, please send an email to djsa@hebrewcollege.edu to receive your user name, password and instructions. Be sure to include your name, email address and Student ID or Gann Library membership bar code in the body of the email.
By the way, are you sitting on Jewish vinyls or 78s that you can no longer play? Then contact Dr. Alex Hartov at alex.hartov@dartmouth.edu. If the DJSA don't yet have these in our collection, they may even be able to make you a CD of them for your personal enjoyment.
--Lewis Glinert
The DJSA, which has been featured in the New York Times, is the brainchild of two Dartmouth professors: Dr. Lewis Glinert, a specialist in Hebrew culture and Israeli music, and Dr. Alex Hartov, whose research interests extend from ultrasound and medical imaging to sound engineering.