Under bright LED lights in a room chilled to 65 degrees sit rows of exposed shelves displaying trophies, hat boxes and typewriters. Row after row of metal shelves hold cardboard boxes, carefully dated and sealed, containing family genealogy records and newspaper clippings. In the archives at the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, a collection of irreplaceable materials tells the story of Jewish communities in central Ohio going back 175 years.
Toby Brief, the executive director and curator of CJHS says it has been the society’s mission to protect the history of Jewish central Ohio since they began operating 43 years ago in the Esther Melton building on College Avenue in Columbus, where it remains today.
“We represent all of central Ohio,” Brief said. “Towns like Newark and Granville have always been included in our work because there is nobody else handling that.”
With the help of her archival staff and 16 volunteers, Brief works to ensure that precious heirlooms and artifacts are preserved, and small town legacies are not forgotten.
The only permanent feature of the exhibit at CJHS is a wall of photographs presented as a timeline of central Ohio’s Jewish population. It is organized in five sections dating from the 1830s to present.
CJHS typically rotates the archival materials on display in their exhibit every seven to eight months, often corresponding to current research being conducted. However, their current exhibit, “Treasures from the Archives,” has been up since 2020. The exhibit showcases items that were brought to CJHS during the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything from homemade masks to family heirlooms uncovered during quarantine-inspired cleaning is considered “treasure” here.
“People became very conscious of their own mortality during COVID. As people thought about what legacy they’d leave behind, they brought things to us. Every piece in here is a treasure, simply because it has its own story to tell,” Brief said.
Scattered throughout the exhibit, placed next to designated objects, are what Brief calls “Coming Home cards.” The small, blue cards provide the history of items that were found elsewhere and brought back to Columbus.
“The whole idea is to bring something back to where it came from and have its memory and story preserved there,” Brief said.
These tales of homecoming accompany pocket watches, scrapbooks, prayer books, and dolls, all of which are now permanently owned by CJHS. The organization goes through a careful review process when considering inheriting an item to ensure it fits their mission. The original owner then signs a deed to turn their item over to CJHS, where it will remain in their archives forever.
“We keep things around as long as they possibly can be, and we’re keeping them in better conditions than grandma’s basement,” Brief said.
One large corner of the exhibit is dedicated to the COVID era itself, telling Jewish stories from a time when bat mitzvahs, Shabbat services and funerals were held over Zoom. This section of the exhibit celebrates local Jewish leaders who fought back against the rise of anti-semitism during the pandemic and showcases items that reflect a communal shift to life online.
In an exhibit overwise devoted to ancestral heirlooms and antiques, the materials collected during COVID reflect CJHS ongoing work of encouraging Jewish families to save their belongings and recognize that they are not junk. That, Brief says, is the hardest part of their work.
“The biggest problem is getting people to understand that they are living history. We have to get people to care before their things disappear,” Brief said.
That is why CJHS works with families to research materials brought to them and clarify the true history of their heirloom possessions. Brief says the most rewarding part of her work is to help people learn about their family history and about their community.
“A lot of what we have in our archives is the only thing that you can touch, the only physical thing that’s left of a time period, organization, or a family. Our business is to keep the stuff that is tangible out there and available for someone to be able to say, ‘My grandmother may have been the last person to ever touch this book,’” Brief said.
The framed Torah mantles that CJHS received from a synagogue in Mansfield, Ohio, are one example of such tangible evidence of local Jewish life. The ornate covers, preserved carefully behind glass, represent the last of Mansfield’s dwindling Jewish population, as the congregation from which they came recently closed. Similarly, CJHS houses a wooden Star of David that was brought to them by a family in Tuscarawas County, in eastern Ohio, where only two known Jewish residents remain.
One of the most extensive collections in the archives of CJHS is the 500,000 negatives from the work of Herbert Topy, a Columbus-based photographer. Topy is credited with photographing Jewish events, organizations, and businesses in Columbus between the 1940s and the 1970s, and many of those images were published in The Ohio Jewish Chronicle.
His work serves as a record of Jewish life in central Ohio. A photograph from 1950 shows a group of children from Schonthal Day Camp checking out the brand-new Jewish Center. Another picture depicts five women modeling fashionable outfits at The All-Israel Fashion Show in 1969. Topy captured everything from The Columbus Jewish War Veterans Color Guard on Memorial Day in 1953 to the exterior of Martin’s Kosher Food Market, a thriving grocery store still serving the community today.
Amid the boxes of genealogical records and framed portraits of prominent Jewish leaders, CJHS has left themselves room to grow. In their recent remodel of their lower level, they designed the space with what Brief called, “eyes for the future,” meaning they factored in additional storage space for future growth. Brief estimates they have five years worth of room to acquire more historical objects before their shelves are full and they must expand again.
In addition to their tangible archival material, CJHS is actively working toward digitizing as much Jewish history as possible to make it easily accessible. Hundreds of photographs and oral histories are available on their website, https://columbusjewishhistory.org.
One such oral history, recorded in 1999, comes from Ethel Levy Goldberg, who was born in Columbus in 1919. She recalls being raised by Russian immigrants in Columbus during the Great Depression, when her father was President of Agudas Achim Synagogue, still a fixture of Bexley’s Jewish community.
Marty Adler also shared his life’s story with the Historical Society back in 2007. Adler was born in Germany in 1928, and when he was just ten years old, his father was removed from their home in the middle of the night and taken to a concentration camp in Buchenwald. After 19 days, Adler says his father was released because he had a United States visa, and within 24 hours, the Adler family was on a boat set for New York.
“It seems like that’s an area that he blocked out of his mind. But I remember seeing the numbers,” Adler said in an interview with the Historical Society, referring to the identification numbers tattooed on his father’s arm.
“If things aren’t recorded or saved, you can no longer tell the history of a community,” Brief said.
CJHS is undoubtedly fulfilling its mission of protecting the history of Jewish communities throughout central Ohio, although it’s not a simple task. Brief says that because younger generations assume their legacies will be preserved for them digitally, it’s becoming harder than ever to encourage people to save what is passed down to them.
But as members of the Jewish community slowly but surely bring precious items “home” to CJHS, the story of their people and this region is preserved one piece at a time.
Katie Corner writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.