Over 600 Vintage Yiddish Phonograph Records Find New Life With FAU’s Judaica Music Rescue Project

BOCA RATON, FL (May 14, 2004) -- Florida Atlantic University’s Judaica Music Rescue Project received nearly 600 fragile 78 rpm phonograph recordings from the "Golden Age" of Jewish music (1902-55), along with several LP albums.  Milly Nyman, daughter of Jacob Schacter, a pioneer of Yiddish radio in Miami, and David Weintraub, director of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Coral Gables, FL, donated the recordings to FAU.

It was the end of an era when Jacob Schacter taped his last radio program just three weeks before he died in May 1975.  Schacter had been hosting a weekly Yiddish radio program, which aired on Sundays in Miami, for many years.  Following his death, Nyman carefully packed up all his records and taped and sealed the boxes.  Those sealed boxes have now been opened and the contents are being processed at FAU’s Judaica Music Rescue Project, located on the fifth floor of FAU’s Wimberly Library on the Boca Raton campus.

“This was an incredible find,” said Nathan Tinanoff, director of the project.  “Our collection of 78’s is one of the largest in the world.  It amazes me how much more is still out there that need to be rescued.  I was thrilled to discover that 109 of the almost 600 78-rpm recordings in the Jacob Schacter collection were not in our record catalogue.”

The Judaica Music Rescue Project has been actively seeking vintage Jewish phonograph recordings for the past two years.  According to Tinanoff, there is a sense of urgency in this work since the records are fragile and many people do not realize their historical and musical value.  In addition to its primary focus of rescuing 78 rpm recordings from the first half of the 20^th century, the project has expanded its scope to include LPs, tapes, 45s and sheet music.

For further information about the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Coral Gables, Florida, visit www.Yiddishculture.org.  To learn more about FAU’s Judaica Music Rescue Project, contact Nathan Tinanoff, project director, at 561-297-2207 or visit www.fau.edu/jewishmusic.

- FAU -

The FAU Judaica Music Rescue Project is dedicated to finding, archiving, restoring and digitizing all the Jewish music that has been recorded on 78-rpm phonograph recordings.  It began in the spring of 2002 with a collection of about 1,000 vintage 78-rpm recordings of Jewish music.  Today, the collection exceeds 6,000, making it one of the largest collections of vintage Jewish music in the country.