Yiddish Music and Song: the heart-beat of immigrant Jews.

Maxine Schackman

Dr. Maxine Schackman has been at Florida Atlantic University Libraries since 2004, originally as a volunteer for the Judaica Music Rescue Project, then as Assistant Director of the Judaica Sound Archives and currently as the Director of the Recorded Sound Archives. Under her lead- ership the JSA has grown into a major center for the collection, preservation, digitization and study of Judaica sound recordings. Schackman's team is restoring records ranging from the 1920s to the 1960s. The Judaica Sound Archives has a 20,000-item Judaica record collection and the largest online collection of Jewish music in the world. Its website (www.fau.edu/jsa) has close to 15,000 digitized songs, more than 2,500 of these in the Yiddish language.