On this page, you will find basic instructions about how to find the stories and information you want, and how to store them for future reference.

Keyword Search

As we run on a Google search platform, the keyword search works much like a search on Google’s homepage.  Type what you are interested in finding in the search box, and hit enter or search. For more options, hit “Refine your Search” and you will be offered more options, including date ranges.

For your keyword search to be most effective, please consider:

• As this is a closed site, there is a limited range of data which Google can use to learn how to recommend alternate results. So, be mindful of alternate spellings—especially for proper nouns involving people, places and holidays.


• Remember that significant dates or periods in modern Jewish history often did not acquire common names until long after their occurrence. For example, a search for “Holocaust” or “Kristallnacht” will not turn up contemporaneous stories about those events, since those terms only began to be used years later.

Browse by Date

The other main way to search the JTA Digital Archive is the “Browse by Date” field.  

Clicking on this tab in the top third of the site will reveal a list of decades for which their are stories in the archive. Clicking on a specific decade will lead you to a list of years; clicking on a specific year will lead you to a list of months, and clicking on specific month will lead you to a calendar of that month. The monthly calendar displays the number of stories that appeared each day; clicking the number will lead you to a list of the stories published on that day.

For your date search to be most effective, please consider:

• JTA has never published on Saturday, the day of the Jewish sabbath.
• Decades ago, news was not reported a few minutes after it happened.  Frequently JTA reporters had to labor under clandestine circumstances.  As such, a story about a particular event might not show up until the next day or even several days later.

Additional Search Tips

Per Google, some basic facts and suggestions:

• Every word matters. Generally, all the words you put in the query will be used.


• Search is always case insensitive.


• Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters.


• To make sure that your Google searches return the most relevant results, there are some exceptions to the rules above.


• Think how the page you are looking for will be written. A search engine is not a human, it is a program that matches the words you give to pages on the web. Use the words that are most likely to appear on the page.


• Describe what you need with as few terms as possible. The goal of each word in a query is to focus it further. Since all words are used, each additional word limits the results. If you limit too much, you will miss a lot of useful information. The main advantage to starting with fewer keywords is that if you don't get what you need the results will likely give you a good indication of what additional words are needed to refine your results on the next search.


• Choose descriptive words. The more unique the word is, the more likely you are to get relevant results.

For more information on how to use search modifiers such as quotation marks or wildcard characters, please click here for Google’s thorough explanation. Please note that some of the information at that link is only applicable to general Web searches.

Your Archive

We want you to come back and use the Archive often.  

To that end, we’ve create the “Your Archive” feature. This is an easy way to store your favorite articles for easy retrieval during future sessions.

This requires a basic registration, which can be accomplished by clicking the “Sign Up” link in the upper right corner of the site, or by entering your e-mail address in the box under the “Your Archive” description.

Please be assured we will not sell or share your information with anyone.