History Help Line. Celebrating the Detroit Jewish Book Fair. 

Fall is here and with it comes the Jewish Book Fair! In preparation, we’ve pulled out some amazing photo negatives to bring to life those first few book fairs that started a decades long tradition.

These Book Fair images, from the Bob Benyas Photographic Negative Collection, are seeing the light of day for the first time in years. From this amazing collection, we wanted to highlight that first historic decade from 1953 to 1960.

And since these photos are being seen for the first time in decades, you can be sure that we will need some help identifying people! We’ve picked a few group photos from the hundreds of photos in the collection and need your help to identify them! Peruse these photos and others from the Jewish Book Fair here and submit any identifiable information by clicking the “Send Us Feedback” button. Give us as much info as possible and we’ll incorporate it into the catalog record.

And as always make sure to check out the Jampel Center’s website for links to our collections and to our social media!

History Help Line is brought to you by the Joan Meyers Jampel Center for Michigan Jewish Heritage, a collaboration between the Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives of Temple Beth El and the Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit.