When self-described neat-freak and current Observer editor-in-chief Rachel Benaim decided to clean the Observer office in Brookdale 20c earlier this year, she was faced with quite the mess. The office, which hadn’t been cleaned for several decades, was overrun with wires, papers, and broken typewriter parts. Three days of cleaning and filing and 500 discarded floppy disks later, Benaim emerged from the mess with a tidy office and a bold idea. During her clean-up, Benaim came across boxes of old Observers from the 50s onward and was inspired to create the first-ever Observer archive. After a year of hard work, the archive, which has been gifted by Benaim to the school, contains 99% of all Observer issues from 1958 to the present.
When Benaim first began speaking to people about the project, she discovered that there was no pre-existing archive and that access to old Observers was fairly limited. President Joel encouraged Benaim to gift the archive to the school and, with the help of Stern librarians and Dean Burger, the college’s archivist, she set to work compiling the archive. Benaim hopes that someday soon the archive will be digitalized.
According to Benaim, because The Commentator is older than The Observer and was until recently branded the official newspaper of Yeshiva University (and not of Yeshiva College, the title it bears now), there was more of an effort to preserve it. Therefore, unlike The Observer, The Commentator already has an archive on microfilm, though rumor has it that only three Yeshiva College students and a librarian know how to use it.
Though the archive is now completed, it remains to be determined whether it will be housed on the midtown campus or on the Wilf campus. “I’m torn,” Benaim says. “On one hand, because it’s a Stern college paper it should be held here, and we should build up our libraries here. Yet, because so much of the resources are uptown, it would seem silly to isolate it.”
Wherever it ends up, the archive will offer an invaluable glimpse into the past. Benaim marvels at the history it encapsulates: “So many important milestones in the YU world and in the Jewish world, from the Six Day War to the Rav’s Gemara Shiur at Stern College in ’77, are contained in these papers that have been boxed up for decades.”
The archive holds special meaning for Benaim, a committed member of The Observer staff throughout her Stern career. “It makes me feel like I was a part of something—a legacy,” she says. “Seeing the progression of the paper—how it developed from four pages to the paper that it is today—is exciting and encouraging.” Looking forward, Benaim sees the archive as a critical resource for current and future Observer staff members. “It helps writers and editors focus not only on what today’s audience wants to read but also on what readers fifty years from now will want to read—what would give them a flavor of what Yeshiva University was like this academic year?” The Observer archive, a product of Benaim’s efforts and initiative, has preserved the memory and flavor of nearly all the academic years in Stern College’s decades-long history.