The University of Illinois Library’s Illinois History and Lincoln Collections has an exhibit up through May called “Pulling It All Together”: Jewish Community Advocacy, Activism, & Fellowship in Central Illinois, 1959-1984. The exhibition draws from the Central Illinois Jewish Communities Archives, and “explores how small-town Jewish Illinoisans used identity-based organizations to participate politically and socially in the mid to late 1900s.”
The exhibition is vital and necessary; if you’re on campus and able to stop by the IHLC reading room to see it, you absolutely should.
After an initial donation of archival materials in 2021, the IHLC established the Central Illinois Jewish Communities Archives (CIJCA)/Mervis Archives at the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections. You can search this archive online, but there is nothing quite like seeing our material world in person (even if you can’t touch everything).
Illinois History and Lincoln Collections at the University of Illinois Library
324 Main Library
1408 W Gregory Dr
Urbana
M-F 9 a.m. to noon + 1 to 5 p.m.
