Archivist in the Spotlight: Cataloguing Jewish Sheffield with Frankie Drummond Charig

Welcome to the first in our new series of blogs highlighting some of the archivists, collections and projects that make up the Hidden Treasures network. We’ll chat with different archivists working on a range of projects at diverse organisations who are all engaging with Jewish materials. We’ll dive into the individual projects, ask about the highlights and challenges and share some of the knowledge and experiences from our network of archivists.

Our first archivist in the spotlight is Frankie Drummond Charig, Project Archivist at Sheffield City Archives and Libraries. She has just finished a 2 year project, funded by the Jane Goodman Charitable Trust, to catalogue the Jewish material originally kept at the Sheffield Jewish Centre and deposited with the Sheffield City Archives.

Comprising around 80 boxes of material, the project began in June 2023 and was extended to October 2025, resulting in over 600 item level descriptions. The long-term basis and generous funding also gave Frankie time to engage the local community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, with the collection. It’s this engagement Frankie has found the most rewarding, working with the local Jewish community in Sheffield to provide greater insight and introducing more people to the Jewish history of the city.

“Sometimes I think people don’t think archives are for them… but actually when you start explaining about something or showing somebody something, they take a natural interest.”

We started by asking Frankie why she enjoys working on projects like this…

I’ve always loved project-based roles. My last four roles have been project-based including one at Chatsworth House cataloging some of their collections. I enjoy that there’s a clear goal, a defined timeline, and the freedom to dive deep into a collection. You’re not bogged down by the day-to-day of an organisation — instead, you’re focused on uncovering stories and making them accessible. And when the project ends, you leave behind something tangible: a catalogue, a display, a publication, or digitised items.

Discovering Jewish Sheffield

When I joined the project, I didn’t know much about the Jewish faith or culture and particularly, like many people, Sheffield’s local Jewish community. Working on this collection has been a crash course in the city’s Jewish history, organisations and connections for me.

One of the challenges was that I don’t read Hebrew or Yiddish. I had to rely on community members and experts to help interpret some of the materials but that also meant I forged closer ties with them. Hidden Treasures was invaluable — connecting me with people who could decipher spellings, explain terminology, and provide historical context. It was amazing because that’s not something you always get working with this kind of niche archives. You don’t always get this sort of community of people working on the same type of archives as you, even though there might be archives of that type across the country.

Subtle nuances in terminology used in the records came to light – for example the spelling of bat mitzvah as ‘bas mitzvah’ is an indication of the community’s Ashkenazi roots where the pronunciation of the Hebrew letter Tav (ת) is with an ‘s’ rather than a ‘t’ sound. Through challenges like this, I realised we needed to include a glossary in the catalogue to make sure others without a Jewish background could navigate the material too.

The project wasn’t just about cataloguing though — it was also about connecting. The Jewish community in Sheffield welcomed the project with open arms and I found ‘go to’ experts to get advice from including the rabbi and the president of the Sheffield United Synagogue, academics at the University of Sheffield and Jewish people living in and around the city. One standout moment was a photo labelling workshop where community members scribbled names on photocopies of unlabeled images, recognising and talking about friends, family and figures from their memories. I felt a real sense of urgency — a desire to preserve knowledge before it’s lost to time. For me, that kind of engagement is what makes archival work so rewarding.

Highlights from the Collection

One of the things I found particularly striking in the collection are the speeches of Joseph Newman, President of the Sheffield Hebrew Congregation and other visiting speakers in the 1930s and 40s (ref: JCA/3/3/1). They explore Jewish identity, European politics, and the diaspora and show how the president clearly identified as both Jewish and Sheffield-born. This dual identity is something that really comes through in a lot of the materials — a strong pride in being both Jewish and a Sheffielder.

The WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) minute books are another highlight. Alongside notes about jumble sales and bazaars are accounts of speakers fresh off the plane from Palestine, sharing stories about refugees and the building of the new state. The juxtaposition of local and global concerns is a fascinating aspect — and deeply human one. They were really tapped into both — tapped into their own Jewish community, inward looking, and then also getting these people coming from all over the world to tell them about other things going on and what’s happening.

The project also uncovered material from the University of Sheffield’s Jewish Society dating back to 1919. When I showed these records to the current Jewish Society members, they were amazed at how relevant the discussions still felt. It was a reminder that history isn’t just about the past and that often the same questions and discussions continue into the future. All the more reason for items like this to be preserved and shared with the next generations.

Making the Archive Accessible

Thanks to the generous funding, a significant portion of the collection has been digitised. Over 122 issues of the Jewish Journal are now available online, searchable and open access. I was also able to work with a conservator to preserve fragile items and create facsimiles for a display in Sheffield Central Library. This work included the large 19^th-century photograph of Elkanah Levison, one of the founders of the Sheffield Talmud Torah School, that was the centerpiece of the exhibition which featured on Hidden Treasures in July 2024 as part of the Collection Encounters blog series.

The exhibition and a recent open day, where I had items from the archive out for visitors to look at, encouraged even more people to engage with the collection. Some had never visited the archive before and stopped by just because they were curious about Sheffield’s Jewish history. For some it was the first time they realised there was a Jewish community in the city.

The local council has been really supportive of the project too and highlighted the open day in their newsletter to residents. Following on from the exhibition, the information banners have gone on display at the library’s local branch at Parson Cross which is very near Ecclesfield Cemetery — the current Jewish burial ground. One of the archive assistants suggested it and I thought it was a great idea because the people who are using the local library are probably not part of the Jewish community at all but lots of people have an interest in local history, I think.

What’s Next?

The catalogue is live, the digitised materials are online, and a publication is on its way. Written by Professor Judy Simons and called From Shtetl to Steel City: The Lost World of Sheffield Jewish Life, it’s based on the archives, things that she’s found and stories she’s been able to write with the material.

But the work isn’t over and the archive is still receiving items. A recent donation is from Janis Levy, who was an actor with the Maccabi Players and whose father Abe Levy was also a key figure in Sheffield’s amateur theatre scene. His involvement with the renovation of the Library Theatre where the Players performed and his daughter’s acting career with them is a perfect example of how Jewish and Sheffield identities intertwine.

As my role comes to an end I’m reflecting on what the project has meant for me personally too. Apart from the practical side of managing the material and making expert relationships with others in the city and beyond, it has shown me how archives can be both deeply personal and widely communal. It’s about preserving stories, yes — but also about sharing them, celebrating them, and making sure they’re not forgotten.

The project has given an extra layer to the city I live in and deepened my understanding of Sheffield. I can walk down Ecclesall Road and point out where the kosher deli once stood, or where Jacob Reinshreiber’s furniture shop used to be. That’s the magic of archival work — it layers history onto the everyday.

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