Legendary Israeli Photo Collection Arrives in New York

The director of Kehot Publications in Israel, Rabbi Menachem “Meni” Wolff, transferred his legendary archive of photos to Lubavitch Archives in Brooklyn, New York. The collection which includes pictures of the Rebbe, Chassidim in 770, Chabad institutions across the globe and Shluchims peulos, has now joined hundreds of thousands of pictures in the largest Chabad-Lubavitch digital photo collection, established more than eleven years ago.

The more than eleven thousand photos, says Rabbi Wolff, “documents the Chabad that was.” According to Wolff most of the photos were never published, “a third of the pictures are of the Rebbe and the rest of Chassidim.”

Wolff says that over the past few years, “I felt that the archive was deteriorating and getting lost. Some were borrowing the pictures and forgetting to return them.”

Wolff says that Rabbi Dovid Zaklikowski agreed to adopt the collection, “he is the archivist of the younger generation,” Wolff says.

The Wolff collection will join another twenty-five larger collection and many more smaller collections at Lubavitch Archives, “the collection of Rabbi Wolff,” Zaklikowski told Shturem from his office in New York, “is one of the most important Chabad collections from the last generation, however, until now they were not available to those that needed them.”

Lubavitch Archives currently has over 800,000 scanned photos and documents and another 100,000 photos that are still not scanned. “At this time,” says Zaklikowski, “is that the photos should not further deteriorate, for future generations.”

The photos are now being scanned, properly archived and preserved.

Zaklikowski says that Wolff is the one who inspired him to first establish the archive, “I was learning in the Yeshivah in Kfar Chabad,” he says, “and I would speak to Rabbi Wolff for many hours. He would give me the opportunity to review the pictures and he explained to me the historical importance of retaining the images for future generations.”

From then I began collecting pictures and scanning others small collections, “I saw the importance where journalists, writers, professors, museums and the like could turn to if they need pictures.”

Lubavitch Archives, pictures have appeared in Time Magazine, The New York Times, in many books and museums. “The possibility to be able to have them available,” says Zaklikowski, “is due to the photographers and collectors who opened their collections and enables us to scan them.” Therefore the archives are kept under their original names of the collectors and photographer, giving them credit for their hard work.

“Without them Chabad history would have disappeared.”