Collecting These Times

Grassroots Oral History Collecting

CAJM knows this is a critical time to be collecting Jewish voices, perspectives, and experiences.  Even in the midst of national and international turbulence, museums are eager to respond and to collect stories for the future of their collections and to enrich understanding.

CAJM is now making available its oral history methodology to member organizations (and allies) that would like to conduct online oral history interviews about these times.

The TheirStory platform is easy to use for online interviewing; participating organizations will receive guidance and start-up tools from CAJM and TheirStory. The purpose of this work is to responsibly and ethically collect stories of contemporary Jewish experiences, so that they will be available in museums for future generations.

If you are interested to participate, please contact executive@cajm.net.  We will also take requests from non-member organizations that are well aligned and have the capacity to undertake the work responsibly and with great care.

Click here to watch a sample reel of our prior work with more than 18 Jewish museums, as relates to Jewish experiences of the pandemic.

Our thanks go to the Chronicling Funder Collaborative, which originally made this work possible in 2020:
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies
Jim Joseph Foundation
Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah
The Russell Berrie Foundation