About Jewish Lives

We recognise the importance of keeping our stories alive. Knowing our past gives us roots and context. It helps to create a sense of belonging and identity. We can look to history and learn lessons for the present.

We will tell the story of Jewish people who settled in New Zealand and the contribution they have made.  Whether they arrived in 1850 or 2020, we want to recognise and share their experiences; to understand and share their history, whilst also reaching out to the wider population. 

We also seek to strengthen the community of the present, to bring people together through the sharing of stories and information, through developing exhibitions, events and community projects. We hope in this way to help non-Jewish people understand more about the community, in order to promote tolerance and understanding. 

Through sharing that sense of community and building resilience, we will be able to create a future for the community. We hope to engage younger generations, so that they would feel they are a part of something bigger. 

While our narrative and content places emphasis on Jewish lives in NZ, we also provide access to information and material that recognises contemporary Jewish lives and experiences over time and around the world. 

Through reaching out to other Jewish communities and similar institutions internationally, we will leverage the foundational work done by the parent project, Jewish Online Museum to build a network of partners who will collaborate and pool resources with us to achieve common goals. 

About The Website

Our collection is made up of photographic images of objects, documents and materials privately and publicly owned by individuals and organisations across New Zealand.

All our collection of photographic reproductions and images have been reproduced with the kind permission of their owners and are represented here on loan to Jewish Lives. Ours is a growing and changing collection; it is our aim to document and share stories, sometimes through the medium of artefacts and objects, that help to represent the story of Jewish immigration, history and experience, and to share the stories these objects often tell.

If you have stories, objects, images, documents or treasured artefacts you think might be of value to help tell the New Zealand Jewish story, please contact us to discuss including your own collection.

The Jewish Lives website is governed by The Jewish Museum of New Zealand Charitable Trust, whose Trustees are David Shieff, David Robinson, Dame Lesley Max and Dr Sheree Trotter. You can reach the trustees here.

The Archives

Jewish Lives has undertaken a “caretakership” role for the NZ archives of the Jewish community. We recognise the need for a “central collecting archive” of Jewish culture as a historical record that preserves the unique, important, historically significant and valuable, for future Jewish communities, locally and internationally.  We have completed the first stage of the project of preservation and are currently cataloguing this important community resource for the future use of the community and researchers. 

Our Supporters

Jewish Lives relies entirely on the generosity of our supporters. Click here to view our donors’ page.