When freelance archivist Sharon Levy opened a damp, musty cardboard box in a storage room at Congregation Emanu-El of Waukesha, she discovered mildew.
It seemed to be coming from a backpack in the box, long forgotten and blooming with gray spores, with religious school papers that were salvageable.
“It’s really nice to be able to save students’ work because even if we don’t necessarily have a name attached to it, you can kind of see the progression of children learning at the religious school at Emanu-El over time,” said Levy, who has been organizing and archiving historical materials at the synagogue. Her efforts since 2023 are part of a larger project to preserve and showcase the synagogue’s history.
Founded in 1939, Emanu-El has undergone multiple renovations and previously occupied a different building. Its history includes informal gatherings in homes and the acquisition of its current building in 1961, which was later expanded in the 1990s and early 2000s to accommodate growing membership.
Levy is assembling an archive that includes documents and photographs from throughout the synagogue’s history, including building campaigns and community events. Some highlights include photos of the original sanctuary, images from a renovation groundbreaking, documents related to Ethiopian Jewish immigration and thank-you notes from Catholic schoolchildren sent to a longtime member involved in interfaith outreach. “There’s a big history of community outreach here,” Levy said, noting Emanu-El’s unique role in Waukesha County, where the Jewish population is small.
Beyond mildew, there have been practical challenges: removing staples and metal clips, identifying context-less documents, and determining what to keep. Levy emphasized the importance of preserving synagogue archives not only for current members but also for future generations and the broader community. “It’s really important to have a centralized location for all this history and the stories and photographs of past members,” she said. “It’s a recorded history of Jews in America and their cultural and social impact.”
Levy, who grew up attending Emanu-El and now lives in Chicago, began volunteering at the synagogue in 2023 after returning from study abroad. When the scope of the work proved too extensive for a volunteer role, she was hired on contract. She holds a master’s in museum studies and has completed archival internships and volunteer work at Gerber/Hart Library and Archives in Chicago. She also studied archaeology and excavated in Greece as an undergraduate.
Levy found boxes of materials stored in various corners of the building – from archival-safe containers to decaying cardboard. She relocated them from a less accessible basement room to a more climate-controlled upstairs space. There, she categorized papers, removed duplicates and unrelated items, and began storing the cleaned and categorized records in acid-free folders and boxes labeled in pencil – best practices for long-term archival care.
“I can just put on my audiobook and I sort things…and I’ll take out staples and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is really interesting. I should set this aside to show the synagogue president or put on display,’” Levy said of the detail-oriented archival work.
A small selection is now on display in a former gift shop space, including photos of the original sanctuary and the current building’s renovations. Though a digital database is not yet in place, discussions are ongoing. For now, the focus is on preservation.
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