Some delve into Cleveland's Jewish history for family or genealogical research. Others do it because they are active in a "shul" or other Jewish organization, For me, newspaper stories help build history pages like these:

• 1917 The Temple announces that Abba Hillel Silver will be its new rabbi
• 1963 Federation receives a gift to build a new downtown home. 
• 1965 First large rally for Soviet Jews, at Heights High

Until now, you could search the Cleveland Jewish News only two ways: by using the very limited free search on the CJN home page (it searches only five of their 45 years) or by reading microfilm. For me, reading CJN on microfilm has meant go to the Western Reserve Historical Society; pay to park; pay a membership fee or admission charge; crank through reels of film; pay $.50 a page for copies; then scan the copies at home.

Now there's a better way. Sitting at home at your computer you can use this new Digital Archive tool for all issues of the Jewish News - back to 1965 - perhaps half a million items. Searching can be as simple as Googling, or you can use advanced features* to help find what you want from the CJN archive. A search that would have taken hours using microfilm can now be done in minutes! Of course pre-1965 research means the Jewish Review & Observer, The Jewish Independent, and Die Yiddishe Velt. And (sigh) microfilm.

The CJN Archive is already helping this website. It went online Friday July 2, 2010 and in just three days it has helped make two pages more informative:

• Abba Hillel Silver's grave site helped by a CJN story written in 1997
• Cleveland's Jewish City Councilmen helped by Harry Jaffe's obituary (1999)

Try it. It's easy to use, powerful and low in cost. (If you're already a CJN subscriber, you can use the Archive for pennies a month.) To learn more, just click here.

Arnie Berger
July 5, 2010

* advanced features include logical operators AND OR and NOT, wild cards (mov*will find move, moving, etc) proximity searches (word1 within N words of word2), date ranges and more.