Archiving queer Jewish history: power, memory, and identity in the American Jewish Archive (AJA)

In the past two decades, queer archives have proliferated worldwide as LGBTQ+ communities seek to preserve their histories. But what happens when queer histories are incorporated into archives dedicated to ethno-national Jewish narratives? Drawing on research at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), this study examines how Jewish LGBTQ+ individuals negotiate belonging and produce new ritual and communal practices. I argue that the inclusion of LGBTQ+ materials–such as sermons and prayers–challenges the archive's hegemonic frameworks. First, it disrupts heteronormative and nationalist narratives that position the heterosexual family as central to Jewish continuity, offering alternative visions of Jewish identity beyond traditional structures. Second, it reveals the archive as a political institution that shapes knowledge and its limits. Integrating LGBTQ+ histories compels archives to expand definitions of “Jewish history,” exposing the constructed nature of collective memory. Ultimately, the archive emerges as a contested and liminal space where marginalized narratives reshape dominant paradigms, and where ethnographers themselves must reflect on the interplay of religion, gender, and sexuality in the production of knowledge.