This post is written by Curator for Tamiment-Wagner Collections Shannon O’Neill and Michael Nash Research Scholar/Archivist Michael Koncewicz.

For nearly 20 years, Beyond the Pale was the only Jewish radio program that focused on providing a left perspective on local, national, and international news. Hosted by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, it aired on New York’s WBAI Radio (99.5 FM) every Sunday as part of the Pacifica Radio Network from 1995 to 2014. With the support of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), the show featured discussions on contemporary Jewish culture, but also covered crucial events in the history of progressive Jewish activism such as the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle over community control of public schools in the late- 1960s, and the Crown Heights conflict of 1991. Frequent contributors to the program included Henry Foner, Melanie Kay/Kantrowitz, Alan Levine, Josh Nathan-Kazis, Nan Rubin, and Alisa Solomon.

Donated by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark in 2017, the Beyond the Pale Records consists of 17.25 linear feet of materials, including more than 400 GB on 605 CDs, 384 audiocassettes, 273 DATs, 279 MiniDiscs, and 83 ¼ inch audio reels. The recordings include interviews with artists, scholars, activists, and politicians, such as Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich, Dr. Ruchama Marton, Michel Warschawski, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Dr. Tal Jarus-Hakak, among many others. The program covered discussions on many contemporary subjects within the American Jewish community including domestic abuse, LGBTQ issues, Jewish identity, the prison-industrial complex, US foreign policy in the Middle East, U.S.-Israel and U.S.-Palestinian relations, and Jews and the religious right. The collection offers up a multitude of debates and discussions that document different elements of progressive movements in NYC during the late-20th and early-21st century. 

In Spring of 2020, as part of the 7th annual call for the Council on Library and Information Resources’ (CLIR) Recordings at Risk grant, NYU Libraries received a grant in the amount of $37,924.00. The Recordings at Risk grant opportunity is “a national regranting program administered by CLIR to support the preservation of rare and unique audio and audiovisual content of high scholarly value.” The program is designed to support institutions in the high cost–both in terms of cost and labor–of large scale digitization efforts of audio-visual materials. Institutions are afforded the chance to utilize Recordings at RIsk funding to hire vendor support to facilitate this work “responsibly and efficiently” and to “prioritize long-term preservation of content over immediate, comprehensive access.” 

The funding received from CLIR is going to support a project proposed by Kim Tarr, Shannon O’Neill, and Kelly Haydon, titled Preserving Community Radio, Preserving Community Voices: “Beyond the Pale,” Politics and Culture from the Jewish Left. This project will digitize and make accessible 727 recordings that aired on Beyond the Pale from 1995-2014. The nature of this grant, and winning it, was particularly exciting as the Beyond the Pale collection included a variety of at-risk and audio formats inclusive of digital audio tape (DAT) and ¼ open-reel audio tape. An upcoming blog post from Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) graduate student, Alyosha Nowlin, will describe the technical work on the collection in detail.

The Preserving Community Radio project is designed to honor the significance of Beyond the Pale’s independent radio format. Beyond the Pale held important radio airwave space to consider, confront, and converse about overlapping vectors of oppression including class, race, gender, ability, and religious belief. We have currently postponed an event celebrating Beyond the Pale in solidarity with the striking union members of GSOC-UAW 2110. Contributions to GSOC’s Mutual Aid Fund can be made to support striking workers’ rent, food, and other essential living expenses.

We look forward to a future listening party, where we’ll be joined by hosts of the show Marilyn Neimark, Esther Kaplan, and monthly cohost of the show Ari Brostoff. We’ll play clips from the newly digitized audio for which Marilyn, Esther, and Ari will provide commentary and reflection. As a means to honor the importance of artistic expression and performance of Beyond the Pale, and to social movement work broadly, Basya Schechter, of Pharaoh’s Daughter, will perform. 

After the conclusion of this future event, for those who are unable to attend, we’ll update this blog post with a link to the event’s recording.