 Hi everyone, we're going to give it just a minute or so for everyone to kind of populate the room. But thanks for joining us on a Monday. Everyone should have the ability to access the chat so you are more than welcome to say hello in there at any point. And I will go into some more of the technical aspects in just a few minutes. But everyone is being prompt as usual which is always highly appreciated. I'm going to start by sharing my screen. Okay. Well, welcome everyone to today's C2C care webinar program. My name is Robin Bauer Kogo and I'm coming in from you just outside of Washington DC in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm just going to run through a couple of quick slides and then we're going to go ahead and start today's program. I'm Robin Bauer Kogo I am the C2C care coordinator and you can reach me at C2CC at cultural heritage.org with any questions you might have. This is our home on the web connecting to collections.org on that website you will find our entire archive of online programming which is quite impressive if you actually dig around in it we've been doing this program for over 10 years. I encourage you to go take a look at it webinars courses curated resources are on there and a link to our moderated community so if you're new to our program, I encourage you to go and click around and see some of our past programming that we have. We also have two homes online for updates for social media we have our Facebook community in our Twitter profile so if you're interested in announcements or anything else related to the program itself I encourage you to go follow those if you're on either one of those outlets. We are using zoom webinar today so a couple of quick technical notes on that as a participant you have access to a chat box which is an excellent place to say hello. Maybe comment on the weather we had some wild weather here outside of Washington DC over the weekend but now it's turning lovely and everything's blooming so I encourage you to talk about that or maybe say where you're from. You also have access to a Q&A box in the Q&A box you can actually ask questions of our presenter today. I encourage you to use that Q&A box for questions if you put them in the chat, we can kind of lose them sometimes due to the stream of consciousness away the chat run so again use that Q&A box for any kind of questions you might have at any point during the program. I also wanted to let everyone know that we are recording today's webinar so once it's done we will be posting it on both our website and the FAIC YouTube channel. We've also enabled closed captioning so if you hit the CC button at the bottom of the screen you will be able to see closed captioning while we go through the program. A quick upcoming programming note on May 2 2023 at two o'clock Eastern so we're doing it a little later than our usual one o'clock time. We're going to be doing some joint Mayday programming with the emergency programs run by FAIC Maydays an excellent yearly program where we basically asked everyone to just do one small thing to look at their emergency plans and get prepared to deal with emergencies throughout the year. The webinar for that day is going to be where to find aid and how to get training for disasters we've partnered with a bunch of great organizations, including the folks from FEMA, Smithsonian and architectural groups. Also, to talk a little bit about just where to find aid how to get some training if you are interested in pursuing that kind of idea for your institution. A lot of other fun emergency stuff so and also we're going to be featuring FAICs program so if you are interested in emergency planning, which is also one of my areas I'm interested in I encourage you to join us for that joint program. So I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen and I'm going to introduce our presenter today their name is Marguer-Leach-Linder. They're the principal conservator at Pearl Preservation LLC a preventative conservation consult consultation and services firm. This lecture on caring for Judaica and museum collections and provide cultural background and practical advice for collections care professionals. And we encourage everyone to just be mindful of the chat be aware that you know this we can be talking about some sensitive information here and some cultural sensitivity but we know everyone in our audience is fabulous and will be polite and keep everything in a nice tone. So without further ado I'm going to go ahead and hand this over to Marguer-Leach Marguer-Leach feel free to take over whenever you're ready. Thank you Robin and thank you connecting to collections care for having me for having these webinars that live on in the internet in perpetuity and our great resource. For those with questions and I'm here to answer some questions for those caring for Judaica in many different ways. Can everyone see the PowerPoint. And I get a thumbs up. Yes. Okay great. It looks perfect. Thanks feel free. Excellent. Excellent. So as Robin said my name is Marguer-Leach-Linder I use they them pronouns. I'm a graduate from the Winniter University of Delaware program in our conservation with a specialty in preventive conservation and a focus in working with Judaica. So I'm here today to kind of synthesize all of that into one webinar of 45 minutes. And so here is my email pearl preservation 22 at gmail.com. And I encourage you to reach out with any additional questions or clarifications that might come up during today's talk. So let's do a quick little check in. I was introduced to this visual recently during a trauma informed training for art educators, and I just love it and want to share it with as many people as possible. So just take a minute to look at the graphic and see how maybe you're feeling today and if you feel comfortable you can share your number in the chat and you know maybe if someone's feeling a seven there's a six out there to give them some support today. So I just offer this as a time for reflection now but also a great graphic that I hope you, you know use going forward. So I'd like to start by acknowledging the land that I have the privilege to live and work on. I believe that a land acknowledgement is about understanding our personal relationship with the land that we're on and how we got here. Many both sides of my family originate in Eastern Europe and came to this land as Holocaust survivors and refugees, and they were given sanctuary from violent persecution and complete displacement. On both sides I'm the second generation to be born on this territory, which itself came from the violent persecution and displacement of indigenous people. So with acknowledging the Lenny Lenape and when not gay hooking communities, I can begin to embody the Jewish value of tycoon alarm, healing the world through reparative social justice. So with that, I acknowledge that I currently reside on the unseated ancestral indigenous territory of the Lenny Lenape and when not gay hooking people of the Delaware watershed, who stewarded these lands for centuries and continue to do so. So I know that people from all different backgrounds are during from this webinar I'm really grateful to have been asked by this group, because I know that the audience is mostly collections care folks at small and medium size institutions who may or may not have a conservator on staff, or have access to conservation information, and may have little or no previous knowledge of Judaism or Judaica. So it's kind of a wide breadth of folks coming in with, with different amounts of knowledge and experience. And so while the primary audience are those kind of collection care professionals. For those of you who are watching this, looking to take care of your collections and heirlooms at home, or for those who are a Jewish institution and already have a solid grasp on the Jewish content and are looking for more collections care advice. You can also learn here and I encourage you to reach out. If you have any additional questions. Jewish people and material culture, people of the book, we love our stuff. Jewish people have been thinking about ritual objects and holiness from biblical times to the present. The Torah itself the Jewish Bible has many descriptions of objects and rituals that utilize them. The destruction of the second temple in 70 CE prayer based Jewish worship emerged and evolved simultaneously with the advent of rabbis. These learned scholars read and reviewed the Torah and debated their lessons down to the specifics. These debates are captured in the Talmud and Gamara, which are records of these historic rabbinic opinions and debates. And this tradition continues to this day as color scholars continue to think, discuss and write about their understanding of Jewish material culture, based on a mixture of how which is Jewish rabbinic law, and their lived experience and I have an annotated bibliography with lots of recommended reading. And I'll point you in that direction towards the end of the talk. We're dealing with text and tradition and interacting with Judaism by questioning and by re examining our Jewish values, and this type of engagement can be seen as religious practice. Her a recent study by the Pew Research Center Jewish Americans in 2020, which I guess is it's not so new anymore. I remember as it was a very interesting study, I recommend that you read it if you're interested in this topic, and more Jewish American these days experience their Judaism in two increasingly divergent ways. One focused on kind of traditional religious practice, and the other focused on non traditional explorations of Jewish life and ritual. What makes these two ways of thinking is Jewish material culture, Judaica, ritual objects, art, and historic artifacts. 80% of Jews in the US say they own a menorah 56 a satyr plate, more, more than half. And so really, there's a lot of stuff in the Jewish culture and many, many people appreciate it. So what is Judaica. When are we actually talking about what does that word mean. It can mean a lot of things Judaica can include all the objects of Jewish religious observance religious ceremonial and life cycle objects. I think that Jewish art can also include secular fine arts and crafts made by Jewish people that may contain Jewish themes or narratives, or maybe connect to a significant Jewish historical event or place. Often anything with Hebrew letters or writing is considered connected to Judaism. So to our objects connected to Israel or Israeli makers. This however is extremely nuanced and carries with it political tensions. When considering the Jewish people. It is important not to conflate the three separate but interrelated Israel's Am Israel, the people of Israel, that is all Jews everywhere. Arez Israel, the land of Israel, and many not Israel, the state of Israel as represented by its government. They are all separate and every Jewish person has their own unique connections, feelings and engagement with each Israel. These examples of subtlety and intricacy and complexity are an argument for community members to be part of heritage care. Without their input and guidance, perhaps our current conservation or collection care practices that treat cultural objects simply as material objects, and not full layered complicated objects that they truly are is doing a disservice to both the objects and their communities. You can see that Judaica can be fine, defined in many different ways. My working definition that I hope we can take forward into this talk is all objects that catalyze Jewish ways of being. But I'm sure that when you signed up for this talk, you were not thinking about all objects that catalyze Jewish ways of being. When you were thinking about these objects where there's no mistaking that they are used in traditional Jewish rituals and Jewish homes. These types of objects have a long history of use and therefore a long history of understanding. These are objects that may have additional sacred considerations that you should be aware of, or at least know who to ask. So, according to the traditional classifications of sacred Jewish objects there are these four categories. The categories have more strict rules, others are more relaxed. These traditional classifications only consider traditional ritual objects, and are based on Jewish rabbinic law. So those highlighted green ritual and sacred objects we saw from the slide before in this system. There is a hierarchy, as you see here. They dictate how they are to be made, handled, repaired, and disposed of through burial based on how they're classified. So really in this spectrum of classifications, clay Kodesh are the ones that are most complicated. They're the holiest objects literally translates to vessels of holiness. They are most sacred because they have the name of God written on them one or more times. They are considered sacred whether or not they are in use. Examples of these clay Kodesh objects that contain the written name of God are the sefer Torah, the Torah scroll to fill in and Missouza. The parchments inside all of which are carefully crafted by a sofare or scribe, who must hand write each letter flawlessly. Fall into one of these three additional categories, each different in particular ways. For the sake of collection care practices that can all be considered not sacred, and don't have the same sort of considerations that clay Kodesh might. And I'll take a moment here to pause and point out the Tashmi Sheikidushah line where you can see an image of a Missouza. So there's a small scroll of parchment with a handwritten prayer and text inside. And that parchment is clay Kodesh, and it is housed inside this little box that is Tashmi Sheikidushah because it is in direct contact with that holy object. So that's an example of kind of the intricacies where understanding how pieces of objects and how they're used relate to one another can inform how to care for them in your collections. So the clay Kodesh life cycle, this is the one that's the most complicated. The very creation of these clay Kodesh items involves spiritual Kavanaugh, which is intention to infuse them with Kodeshah, holiness. Objects that are traditionally more holy have special handling guidelines aimed at preserving the structural integrity of the ink on the parchment and the legibility of the text, which if damage deems the object no longer kosher or fit for ritual use. Likewise, religious manuscripts that time or human error has rendered unfit cannot be thrown out but rather require Ghaniza, which is removal. The concept is that these works like people different than people but like people are living things and possess an element of sacredness. So when they die or become worn out they must be honored and protected from profanation or misuse. In some communities, text stored in a Ghaniza would eventually be buried alongside a righteous individual in a Jewish cemetery. More frequently scrolls and scraps were ritually consigned to their own burial plot. And in other cases, some communities appear to have used this removal to this nook or box of a Ghaniza as the terminal state of the process and they kind of stayed there without going into the ground. They're still removed in a careful and intentional way. And I hope this slide for the conservators or for those considering treatment I hope this slide helps you understand when to ask for help, because there is some damage that is okay to be fixed by a conservator and some damage that is not if it has to be made kosher again. That is a job for a so far so far at not for a conservator. So we've kind of we've talked about these traditional classifications. But I'm also really interested in what Rabbi Vanessa Oaks proposes in one of my favorite books inventing Jewish ritual. She proposes this non hierarchical system with two categories, explicitly Jewish objects and implicitly Jewish objects. This system considers but does not privilege rabbinic interpretation of Jewish law, and it aims to be more people oriented by making space for more Jewish tradition. Explicitly Jewish objects signify that Jewish life is being intentionally constructed. They are articulate revelatory self evident and unambiguous, which I think is the key word there. They establish Jewish Jewish identities and serve as reminders that they, that they exist in a setting that is Jewish and they create an occupied Jewish space. A Torah scroll and Missouza, a Seder plate are examples of explicitly Jewish objects there's no mistaking their meaning implicitly Jewish objects may not readily reveal the Jewish work they do. They're not overt signs or props, but they can still participate in the fulfillment of commandments or embody Jewish values and concepts. An example of this is books in a Jewish household. Some might be explicitly Jewish a sea door a prayer book, a book in Hebrew a Passover cookbook cookbook, all of those signify that it is a Jewish space. However, the Jewish values of curiosity, learning and asking questions are embodied in all the books, making the whole library implicitly Jewish. This wider definition requires people to be involved with the object and may in some ways confuse you if you're thinking is what I'm looking at Judaica. The question really is, is it traditional Judaica that is unambiguous and explicitly Jewish, or is it in some way connected to the Jewish people implicitly implicitly in a way where connecting with communities and asking questions is the way to be best in service of the objects and by extension the communities. So I'm going to spend the next few slides talking about the Torah scroll itself. It has the most extreme creation and care needs and exemplifies kind of one extreme end of the Judaica care spectrum. Here you can see an image of several see for a Torah with various dressings and accoutrements, which is where a lot of regional and cultural variants will come in and artistic styles and how the aesthetics and what materials are used. But you'll notice that they're stored in an alcove. With one or more curtains or screens that can open and close. This is called an Aron Kodesh a holy arc. The Aron is reminiscent of the biblical tabernacle and is said to contain the spirit of God and of Torah. It is considered special sacred and safe. So not only does it have a sacred presence and its own associated rituals, but it also serves as collection storage that buffers from large swings and relative humidity protects from light pests and dusts. So here is a diagram of the Torah scroll and some of its accoutrements. So I, my goal in including this is to give you a reference point so that you have some terminology to pull from when going through your collections. In understanding what it is that you actually have and how you should be referring to them. You can, you can see here that the sefer Torah the the parchment itself is the clay Kodesh the highest tier of holy status. And all of these accoutrements these adornments are that second tier that Tosh Mishay Mitzvah or Tosh Mishay Kedusha, which do not have the same care or creation requirements. And so I hope that this diagram can help you identify and work with the objects that you have in your collection. These images show a sofa a scribe in various steps of creating the Torah scroll. And so far hand writes each letter, absolutely flawlessly. If there's any error, they would use a very fine scalpel like you see in the bottom left corner to scratch off the ink in the first layer of parchment so that the letter can be rewritten, rather than having to replace the entire panel of parchment. This work should only be done by a trained so far or so far it. You can also see here the so far sewing together panels of of parchment with text on them. And that is another way to manage a repair if a panel is damaged and is no longer kosher. One option is to remove that panel by unsewing it and replacing it with a kosher one. I've learned today because I was researching for this talk that a Torah, depending on the size of the animals used for the parchment can contain between 60 and 80 panels of parchment. And I think that's pretty significant because you really get one good piece of parchment like this large enough to use for a panel, one per animal. So that's, you know, 60 to 80 lives that literally go into making this. And that to I think really adds to the sacred element and the respect and reverence that we should have and taking care of it and respect the lives that that gave to it. This image shows a Torah scroll in use for the ritual chanting service that happens several times a week. And here that the text is very specific, this font with the little crowns is particular to the Torah scroll you don't really see it anywhere else it's a very particular font. And the way the text is written in columns is standardized and so these handwritten columns and letters and panels are exactly the same in every single handwritten scroll. There's just so much tradition and passing on how these things are done that the standardized manufacturer by hand I think is pretty incredible. But I will say not everything is standardized as you can see here are some dark patches and that is likely pigmentation from the animal that gave us this parchment panel. And there's still definitely ways to connect back to the life to the nature, and to the, you know, not everything is governable you can write in perfect columns and you'll still have spots and that's okay. Additionally, I'd like to point out this tool which is called a yard, it means hand, and it was developed as a way to preserve the Torah scroll because the text is the most important. The reader was using their finger to keep track of their place they may introduce oils into the scroll and cause damage and so this piece of Judaica the yard was developed to mitigate that and has become its own form of Judaica. And has expanded from there but interesting that it kind of started as a preservation tool. We've talked about the Torah, which is parchment and ink and sinew which sows it together and those wooden rollers those that's fine. But when we're talking about Judaica at large, or Judaic collections or institutions. What types of materials are represented what, how should you be thinking about these objects from a material standpoint. And the answer is complicated because it's all objects. All materials. And so it's important to use existing collection care resources for care or handling of these various materials. It's the easiest ceramic glasses glass and so reaching out to experts and conservators who specialize in those or connecting to the myriad of resources that exist online by material is a great place to get started. So what I'm thinking about the clay Kodesh objects are Torah to fill in and Missosa. These holy handwritten texts on parchment are both the most holy and have those additional considerations, and also the most sensitive to deterioration parchment is very sensitive to changes in relative humidity and is also pretty delicious. So, while I can't give advice for every single material material you may encounter in in this collection. I thought I would share this query that I received from a paper conservator. They reached out to me from a paper lab working on a katuba, which is a marriage contract also handwritten on parchment, but does not usually contain the name of God, and is therefore not clay Kodesh not top tier holy is just parchment with text. However, the conservator was looking looking to consolidate flaking media on the parchment and was looking for a sympathetic adhesive. Using gelatin from pigs or horses would not have been appropriate as they're not kosher animals. It would have been disrespectful to introduce those materials to a Jewish object. And so together we found an alternative. We found a food grade fish based gelatin. She shared with her handout on kosher certification symbols and what to look out for and what they mean. And because it is food grade, it needs to be certified kosher if that is it it's intended use. And so because we have that certification, it is guaranteed that the animal and the processing are kosher. And in addition, because it's protein based, it's also sympathetic to the work on parchment which is all to also protein agis. So we found a protein based adhesive that met both the cultural needs of respecting cash route, and the material needs of being sympathetic to this work on parchment. So how do you know if an object has additional requirements, if you're going through your storage. How would you know. So this flow chart is a quick place to start. First figure out what sort of object it is, and if it contains the name of God. Consider reaching out to me, I'm always happy to answer questions and look at the blurry pictures of things you send me and it's always fun and interesting and I, I love supporting y'all so please do reach out. So examining the letters, I think is the biggest condition issue to be concerned about because the legibility and perfection of the written letters are what deems it kosher or not. So examining the condition of the letters and their adhesion to the surface, I think is the first thing that you should be looking at. Talk to a sofa or talk to me and I'll connect you to one. So a little bit of a pivot, a little bit thinking less literally more creatively more metaphorically. But I will share this project that I worked on in connection with the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Ariel Tonkin was an artist who contributed several pieces to this exhibit called offense around the Torah, including this hybrid ritual object. Arielle wove the piece using recycled and hand dyed threads to create this like very exaggerated super long tallit prayer shawl like object. In the exhibition the object had to travel back across the country and needed a transport container to protect it from wrinkling and additional support during transit. So I built this custom archival box that could serve as a storage and a transport container and drove down to meet for the installation and we rolled it up and tucked it away. The box itself is really nothing too special. It's a pretty standard custom housing using archival quality materials. Pretty standard. But the coolest part for me is when Ariel sent a thank you note and called the storage box and our own code. Now if you remember we talked about that a few slides back. This is the special box or nook where communities store their Torah scrolls their sacred objects. So Ariel's connection really warmed my heart. Because it kind of took something pretty mundane secular and elevated it to make it feel holy and special. And I really hope to continue to bring this kind of cross thinking and a value based approach to my ongoing work. So a little bit about intention. Kavanah is a mindfulness practice it exists in a lot of different ways in Judaism. But like I said before, it is practiced by scribes when making and preparing holy texts. They get themselves into a state of mind of complete focus and respect. Kavanah requires both freedom from extraneous thoughts and distractions and the cognizance that a person is standing before a divine presence. And I thought that was pretty cool. I think intention is great in a lot of ways in many different areas of life. So I did a little bit more research. And I learned that this actually comes from my monities, who is a famous medieval scholar and commentator. And he states that there are five elements to proper prayer, the first of which is Kavanah, this intention and mindfulness, then clean hands, a covered body, a clean space and removal of distractions. I don't know about you, but those all sound like really good habits to pick up anyway in collections care spaces regardless of if you're working with Judaica or not. Clean spaces, closed toed shoes in the lab, clean hands, removal of distractions, all of those are good practice to be doing regardless of the type of object or collection. So some practical steps. Determine the type of object. If you don't know, ask. I'm always available your local community is available. Many universities have Hillel or Hobart house on campus. They're always very kind. In fact, the images you see here of me teaching a class about the Torah scroll at the University of Delaware. We borrowed a Torah scroll from the Hillel, and had to trek it across campus, and we had a couple of options we could have put it on a cart. I was really nervous about how shaky that was going to be. So our solution was to use a blanket that we had because it was a little bit drizzly. So we covered the object and I carried it. You know, in the proper Torah carrying position that has it secured from the bottom and safely resting against your body. I felt very in control of the object it wasn't going anywhere it was not too heavy. So, even just wrapping the object and carrying it by hand are thoughtful practices that you can take as one example and apply to your situation situation however make sense. Basic storage is okay. It doesn't have to be fancy. If it buffers against those agents of deterioration it's doing a great job. I would say though that consider where you store the objects that can be a sign of respect or not objects on the ground. It's not a great idea for water and pests, but also is not, you know the most respectful place for objects of status. So, consider where in your storage space. They live. And again, if you have any questions, please reach out. Additionally, I presented this poster at AIC last year that details additional practical steps regarding storage and handling. This exists online it will be shared in the annotated bibliography that FAIC is sharing out today, but covers things like storage handling emergency preparedness behavior and conduct around objects. So, you know, when you have problems when you should and when you should ask for help and embracing end of life for some objects and what that can and should look like in institutions. And if you found this interesting. I wrote a whole bunch about it. I wanted to share that it is all synthesized in a chapter in the upcoming publication prioritizing people in ethical decision making and caring for cultural heritage collections religious values as conservation practice. And I talked about a lot of the topics that we discussed in this lecture. And I additionally discussed the paradox of the Holocaust Torah, which the little teaser is that if the Torah is supposed to be buried if it's no longer fit for ritual use. And we have torres that survived the Holocaust and have this like really powerful historic and memorial value. Does that memorial and educational value supersede its need for burial requirements. And so I won't answer that here and I'll have you read the chapter to find out the answer. And so, with that here are some favorite resources. Additionally, I've been putting together on my Instagram this Judaica 101 series I guess you can call it. So if you follow at Pearl preservation on Instagram you'll be up to date with these kind of deeper dives into the specifics of particular pieces of Judaica and their materials. And it's also being done in partnership with culture.org which launches today, which is a hub of Jewish art, both contemporary and older. And I'm grateful to be partnering with them on this Judaica 101 series. So, with that, thank you for having me. Chag Sameach to those who are celebrating Passover this week. And I suppose I can stop sharing and open the floor for questions. That was great. Thank you. It's fascinating to me about how you were talking about how that idea of intention like that really hit a chord with me today because I told Marguerite and some of my other friends like we're doing a room swap in my house and my poor kids every time you move something I'm like intentional thought on where this thing is going. Before we start to get around the house, which is a huge tenant of just museum moving, right, you don't start moving objects around until you really sit there and you think okay what are the where the issues that we're going to hit, you know what I mean as we move things around and just all these kind of this bubble of stuff surrounding dealing with objects and stuff it's fascinating that that's like held within text, you know what I mean from years ago so thank you for saying that I found that. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that example. If you don't pick up an object unless you have a place you're going to put it down. And so you got to have step two before you take step one and that takes intention for sure. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's in the mantra of the house I'm sure everyone in my family is very sick of me saying it but that's really what we were doing this weekend. Okay, so we already have some questions coming in. So let's go ahead and start hitting them just so we can start going through and I'm going to encourage our audience to please feel free to put those questions in the q amp a box. Again, it just helps us track them a little bit more than in the chat box, you can access the q amp a box you look down at your zoom toolbar there should be a little box along there just as q amp a just click on that you can pop a question in there. Okay, it operates just like the chat box. So the first one we have is in what category of treatment do the crowns on the top of the tour of fallen since they are silver, they can tarnish is it a common practice to clean the tarnish off. So what do you think about that one. Good question. We can even go back to the slide that talks about that. My, let me double check myself before I say that. Yeah, go for it. So here we are the the crown up here, the, the finials, these the breastplates are also often silver. And so they are not the top tier they themselves do not necessarily have the name of God written on them the way that the parchment does their second tier their they come in contact with that holy object. So yes cleaning is allowed, you know from a, you know rabbinic law perspective. But like all cleaning of silver, there are many factors is it solid is it plated. Is there value in the tarnish are you looking for it to be brand new. If you polish it how quickly will it tarnish again and what are you doing to prevent and mitigate that. So those questions still apply. Yeah there's some definite rules to and when it comes to cleaning silver and I'm not a conservator I am a trained registrar that whenever I would actually think about cleaning things I would reach out to my friends who work in with metals, a lot and really get the kind of stuff because they're the folks who are really going to know like what's good to use what's not good to use how to store it then you know what I mean like it's, again it's kind of like what you refer to that it's always good to have these people to reach out to and reference to when it comes to storing these types of things for totally. I'll also throw out that. Yeah you mentioned solvents and like cleaning materials that sort of stuff. There's like health hazards and considerations so PPE and knowing those and being in a space that has good ventilation and all of that stuff is important. Yeah. Yeah, that's we're getting into the belly wake of regular museum, or you know, museum stuff that's all drilled into our heads as we go through our training programs. And speaking what temperature and humidity are recommended for Kaleo Kudush objects to be stored in. Oh, wow. Is that a big question. Oh my God I have so many feelings. This temperature humidity thing has been really like bearing its head and a lot of our programming lately it is fascinating just talking about sustainability and stuff so but I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this. Man, I have a lot of feelings about temperature and relative humidity, much more than we can cover here. Call me for more. There is a, there is a trend in conservation to widen the acceptable ranges of relative humidity and temperature. To both be more sustainable on your building and HVAC system and also embrace the understanding that objects, especially very old ones have lived an entire life before they were put into climate control and so there's an excellent article that I sent to Robin that I should add to the annotated bib about object proofing, which is kind of talking about the most extreme environmental conditions and object has been exposed to. Unless it exceeds those. There's a likelihood that mechanical damage has kind of done what it's going to do. That piece of it. And that is a consideration for things like the wooden handles if there's a crack in the wood the crack probably won't get worse. Parchment is its own beast with very high sensitivity to fluctuations in relative humidity. So I would recommend thinking more about the fluctuations and how quickly they happen, rather than the range because very slow increase or decrease, the parchment is going to be able to equilibrate the humidity that it feels comfortable and is not going to be like jerked in one direction of the other is not going to become very brittle very warped. And so one thing that helps the Torah itself buffer that is these really big roles of parchment, which themselves kind of buffer changes in relative humidity. So you have this ceremonial dressing, which is also buffering changes in relative humidity and then you have them placed in a separate storage nook that is closed also buffering swings in relative humidity. And so it's really the swings I would be most concerned about for the parchment. Final answer. I'll also note that this came up. Some of these questions came up in our January webinar as well which is all about like sustainability and collections environments. Officially we do still recommend we follow the ASHRAE standards which I put I'm going to put the link in the chat so people have it. Officially, but I think some of these I would just keep noting this because as Marguerite said she passed along an article, or they pass along an article to me, which I found very interesting so there's. This is like, again, Wild West territory a little bit, which I'm finding very fascinating. But I'll just, I'll just quickly note that high temperatures are always bad. They accelerate any chemical reactions including the degradation ones. So, I will say that I feel more strongly about a strict maximum, then I do about a minimum because cold temperatures are usually better for the objects. Good for thought. I think that sounds good. I think that's a perfect way to refer to it. Do you have recommendations for the exhibition of a Torah, particularly with respect to display orientation visibility a text rotation concerns. Excellent question. Excellent question depends depends who is exhibiting it. It depends if the community has agreed that it's appropriate to put on display. Because again it might have, you know, if it's not being used for ritual. Does it have an expectation that it should be put to Ganesha, or does it have some educational value that supersedes that need and and can you really justify that. That's one part of the question. The second part is there are the tourists, the Torah is read once a year. Every week we, we read what is called a parasha. I don't know what that word is in English, like portion, I think. But once a year you cycle through the whole Torah scroll. So in a way it kind of has a nice little rotation schedule already built in, if you're committed to doing it once a week. It could match up with, you know, the week that is being read then. There is also some conversation about modesty, where it's inappropriate for too many columns of text to be visible at once. So keeping it to two or three is appropriate but more than that is questionable. I think those are my initial, initial thoughts, I'd be happy to chat with you more if you have specifics. But like any ink on parchment, keep it away from Windows, if it has a vitrine UV protective film like steps to protect it from those agents of deterioration, as you would a normal work of work on parchment. Yeah, I'll just note that like, you know, it's, it's, I think those general rules are perfect and really help will help anyone when it comes to exhibiting these types of things that it always is, there's always case by case scenarios too. So it's always just keep that in mind as well. When you're planning on these. We are planning to treat a Megala in which, in which category would it go if it's very badly damaged. Oh, this is a good question, because a Megala is like, okay, it's canonical, but it is not part of the Torah, it is part of the Tanakh, which is a more expanded version. So, the Megala is the story of Esther, and tells the historical narrative of Jews in Persia, and their flights struggles and triumphs. And actually, I really think this is true. But the name of God does not appear once in that whole story. And so even though, and there's like a lot of talk of like, ooh, what does that mean, is it a metaphor. It's a mechanical standpoint it means that it's not top tier clay Kodesh. It is, you know, ink on parchment that is maneuvered right has that mechanical role action, but does not contain the name of God and is therefore not top tier Holy. We got confirmation in the chat the name of God does not appear in it. Thanks to thanks chat. That was impressive. Um, should. Well, here I'll go to this one first. Are there any restrictions about who is conserving treating objects such as female versus male unmarried versus married ages above below certain years, etc. I know I have had that experience working with tribal collections, being told that there are certain items I shouldn't handle. Is there anything like that within Judaica collections. That is very complicated. And it depends on who you ask, I think the number of answers is the number of equal to the number of Jews in the world, I think everyone would have a different answer. There are some more traditional sects that are very binary are very gendered have very specific rules about genders. There are more progressive groups of Jewish people who embrace contemporary society and ways of thinking and are not so strict with gender, I mean, I'm a trans mask non binary person. So should I really even be doing this, you know there would be some people out there who would argue, no. I think we invite them to shoot me an email and have a conversation and. Yeah, it's it's complicated if you have questions about it. I'd be happy to answer them on a kind of case by case basis. But I think my final answer is each Jewish community is going to have a particular response. And so it might be worth asking, asking them. Asking your local Jewish communities. That's a smart way to go about it, just because it I've had the exact same experience with tribal communities, where some tribal communities have been very much like, yes it does matter when it comes to me being a female who is of child bearing years, you know, and I think that is something important others have told me that it's not because I am not native, you know what I mean so it doesn't apply to me so I've had those kind of answers as well and I think it really just depends on looking at your institution talking to the communities, getting their opinion and kind of going from there and making your best judgment because I think everyone has the knowledge that none of us want to. None of us want to make anyone upset right we're doing the best we can. So I think the one communication you have on it makes sense. This is where Kavanaugh intention can come in, and you can say, okay, I know that I'm trans non binary and you know the traditional Hasidic Jews are probably not chilled with me existing let alone like working on this historic object, and I can do that and still do my very best to do back to do good by the object, knowing that. And so that mindfulness and bringing your whole self to the table as you're working, I think is part of that conversation. I'm going to put it. Thank you. And should you day items be separated from other objects in long term storage like other culturally sensitive objects from other cultures we've ever come across that in your experience. That's so interesting. I don't know but wouldn't it be cool to see them side by side on the same shelf. I think. Not ideal from like an organization where can I find things on the shelf standpoint but no I don't. I can't think of an example of keeping it away from something else. I think again to me it would just be like if you saw something that maybe was really sensitive just go talk to someone, you know what I mean find an expert and really get their opinion on it, but I think that yeah it's hard it's hard to think of it as a pin with his English you have an actual example of one. I saw something oh here we go someone in the chat this is interesting they learned that kosher ink contains iron gall in it. So be mindful of displaying it so yes we all know the joys of iron gall ink. And there's there's iron gall ink and then there's proprietary ink. So it's like not good either way. So, that is when knowing a so fair is helpful and you can say hey what what is it that you're actually using. Oh this interesting in the chat. I'm going back to the ideas of being separated people are talking about their experiences within Holocaust museums and that people would separate items the Judaica from Nazi items which that makes sense right like totally. That's a super good point and I think that's one of those things that's case by case right like that completely makes sense within it. The people are saying hi to each other in the chat now so that's all that. In the annotated bibliography there's a section Judaica Judaica preservation, but as I was doing research I found the term anti Semerica. Oh, which is exactly what it sounds like stuff that embodies anti Semitism. And so there's a section for more reading in that annotated bibliography so could be an interesting, you know conversation piece. I like that. Okay, so I'm going to have the last question in our chat, or in the q&a says the bulk of our items I believe fall into the category of history photographs meeting minutes, those kind of items. I didn't talk that it is okay to apply standard collections care practices, but are there any access concerns we should be thinking about and they go on to say our general approach is to make the collections available to everyone. But with the unfortunate rise in antisemitic incidents in the United States should we be trying to release access to info about our local Jewish community members. Isn't that an interesting question. Isn't that an interesting question. We'll have to think about that and get back to you. Yeah, like there's how would you verify it like check this box if you have, you know, antisemitic violent tendencies or intentions. I don't know, because you couldn't ask someone to prove that they're Jewish or prove that they deserve to see this. You know, this standard security measures, you know, if a patron. I'm not sure, you know, each institution has their own but maybe you don't leave them alone in the, you know, reading room there's always a staff member with them. Maybe those sorts of things. I know that in indigenous communities there are restrictions to kind of what members of the community can interact with or experience certain objects and to my knowledge there's not a similar sort of barrier to different members of the Jewish community. They just clarified a little bit in the chat saying I was thinking like not putting it online, like our other photos, etc, which that's a choice I mean I, I think it would boil down to a couple things in my head and I'm going to think a little bit more higher level as to what is your current access policy in your collections management policy right you're going to have to refer to that refer to your governing body to if for some reason you work at a state archives like in my former state of Florida, there was a very thing like the Sunshine State laws which basically meant that if you were a public state archive you had to provide access to all your things it was a law, like you couldn't hide away, certain access. That being said if things are being abused or if there's a threat to staff or something like that then I think that there is a case for putting some items on restricted access so it's going to be kind of a higher up question, I think then just someone kind of saying you know you're not allowed to go in there because you know exactly what you said you check the wrong box or something like there's there's going to be some higher level questions. For sure. So I would consider I'm going to share this website in the chat. They're launching today with the goal of consolidating Jewish art and content online it's in so many different places. Their goal is to kind of put it all in one place and so they might be a place to reach out about how they handle putting Judaica or sensitive Judaic content online and what what measures they have in place. Perfect, thank you that was a great resource to throw on there in the last minute so thank you for sharing that. Well, it is two o'clock Eastern so I'm going to go ahead and close out today's program. I put an also in the chat or link to the resources the annotated bibliography that you put in and the link to the survey for this program I encourage everyone to please fill out that survey that helps us with future planning for the webinar series or any other things that we might be planning in the future. Thank you for that little claps and love emotions coming up. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Do you have any final words for our audience and all. Thank you to those celebrating Passover happy Easter to those celebrating Easter and happy spring cleaning to everyone. That's appreciated thank you. Well thanks again to our presenter today Marguerite Schinder thanks again to FAIC and I'm a less for supporting this program. I will be posting the recording by the end of the week I promise and if anyone has any questions feel free to put it to see to CC at cultural heritage.org. I hope everyone has a safe rest of the month and we will see you on May 2 for our May Day programming and emergency planning so thanks again and we will talk to you all soon. Thank you so much.