The Detroit Jewish News Foundation invites students, historians, and web-surfers worldwide to “click their way through history” by accessing a new digital archive of Detroit Jewish News editions dating back to March 1942.

The more than 267,000-document database, now available online free of charge to individuals, represents a page-by-page history of actual newspapers [[with photos and ads) spanning more than 70 years, including countless volumes rescued from a devastating fire at the Jewish News offices in Southfield in January 2002. This trove of information was previously stored in boxes, on bookshelves and on microfilm and was inaccessible to the public. The digitization project, funded by generous donors, took a little more than a year to complete. The archive is now among the largest of its kind in America — Jewish or secular.
State-of-the-art technology allows users to quickly and easily search the database with keywords including names, events, topics, etc. with Google-like speed. The search can be narrowed by date or date range. PDF copies of pages or issues can be emailed or printed.
“The Jewish News is a snapshot in time,” JN Publisher Arthur Horwitz says. “Whether it’s World War II, creation of the State of Israel, the Six-Day War, Soviet immigration, issues today in Washington, it’s all there but with a Jewish context. This archive is valuable and will be valuable for generations to come. It is truly the community’s DNA.”

The website was designed by Media Genesis of Troy, Mich.; ArcaSearch of Paynesville, Minn. is the repository for the document database. It will be periodically updated with new issues of the Jewish News.
Access the Detroit Jewish News Foundation at www.djnfoundation.org.

About the Detroit Jewish News Foundation: The independent, nonprofit Detroit Jewish News Foundation was established in 2011 to pursue an educational, cultural and scholarly mission that provides opportunities to learn, discuss and know the story of the Detroit area Jewish community. Its first project was to preserve, digitize and make available the entire content of the Jewish News, dating to its founding in 1942.