Special projects
Explore highlights of special projects from the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives.
History of Minnesota's Synagogues Map project
In 1856, a group of German Jews established the first synagogue in Saint Paul, two years before Minnesota would receive statehood.
As the population of Minnesota grew, more Jewish families immigrated to the Upper Midwest and established places of worship. These synagogues changed locations often, opened and closed, merged and broke away.
This project aims to map the locations of synagogues and their corresponding cemeteries throughout Minnesota from 1856 to the present.
Digitizing the American Jewish World newspaper
The American Jewish World is a weekly Minnesota newspaper dating back to 1915 that has covered decades of local, national, and international events as they related to the local Jewish communities.
The volumes have been digitized and can be viewed and searched on UMedia.
Near Northside Minneapolis map
This map, created circa 1960 by Clarence Miller in partnership with the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, is part of the collection of the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives.
The map illustrates an area of North Minneapolis, where many Jewish immigrant families lived, as it was during the 1920s. In this project we are attempting to pin information found online – from photos to oral histories – to locations illustrated on the map in order to better understand a neighborhood that has passed into memory.
Minnesota's Immigrants
The Minnesota's Immigrants project explores the stories of the citizens who have immigrated to Minnesota.
Through Minnesota Digital Libraries, the project pulls together different cultural organizations throughout the state to capture and expose the myriad stories of the citizens who make up Minnesota. The Upper Midwest Jewish Archives has contributed an oral history collection -- Soviet Women: "Old Lives, New Lives" Oral History project.