Beyond the Pale Records
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Abstract
Beyond the Pale was a weekly radio program produced and hosted by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark on New York's WBAI Radio, part of the Pacifica Radio Network. The show ran from 1995 to 2014 and engaged in local, national, and international political debate and analysis, and explored the arts and cultural trends from a progressive, Jewish perspective. The Beyond the Pale Records contain audio recordings from the radio program, and include an archived version of their website (https://www.beyondthepale.org), audiocassettes, ¼-inch audio reels, DATs, MiniDiscs, and CD-Rs of air-checks, event documentation, and source material. Materials in the collection date from from 1967-2019 with the bulk of materials dating 1995-2014. The radio show featured interviews with, and speeches and readings by, public figures; recordings of events; and discussions about contemporary political, social, and cultural issues impacting Jewish communities in the United States and abroad.
Historical Note
Beyond the Pale was a radio program produced and hosted by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark on New York's WBAI Radio, part of the Pacifica Radio Network. The show ran steadily from 1995 to 2014 and explored local, national, and international political debate and analysis from a Jewish perspective. Produced with the support of the New York City-based Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), Beyond the Pale included discussions on contemporary Jewish culture from a leftist perspective with writers, filmmakers, musicians, critics, and political organizers.
Arrangement
Materials are intellectually arranged chronologically by year. Materials are physically arranged by format, and then chronologically by year.
Scope and Contents
The Beyond the Pale Records contains an archived website, audiocassettes, ¼-inch audio reels, DATs, MiniDiscs, and CD-Rs of Beyond the Pale audio recordings, which include air-checks, recordings of live broadcasts, events, and audio used as source material. Materials in the collection date from from 1967 to 2019 with the bulk of materials dating 1995-2014. The recordings in this collection document the discussions and debates surrounding both major world events and events in the history of progressive Jewish activism for nearly 20 years. The episodes cover Jewish culture, politics, and social issues, and though the programs are generally based on progressive concerns, the opinions expressed on the program represent viewpoints from not only the political left, but the right as well. Many programs focus on issues surrounding the Middle East conflict, U.S.-Israel and U.S.-Palestinian relations, and the recordings document the development of these issues over nearly two decades. There are interviews with many significant artists, scholars, activists, and politicians, such as Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich, Dr. Ruchama Marton, Michel Warschawski, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Dr. Tal Jarus-Hakak, and 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, and Jews and the religious right. The radio program also explored a number of historical events and their impacts on the present, such as the history of Jewish involvement in radical politics and labor activism, the trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the USSR, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle over community control of public schools in the late 1960s. Frequent contributors to and co-hosts of the program include Henry Foner, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Nan Rubin, Alisa Solomon, Josh Nathan-Kazis, and Abe Velez. Besides the October 2019 capture of the Beyond the Pale website (https://www.beyondthepale.org), there are additional captures by the WayBack Machine between 2008 and 2018.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Beyond the Pale, the creator of this collection, were relinquished and transferred to the public domain in 2017 by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Neimark. These materials are governed by a Creative Commons CC0 license, which permits publication and reproduction of materials accompanied by full attribution. See, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Beyond the Pale Records; TAM 718; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
To cite the archived website in this collection: Identification of item, date; Beyond the Pale Records; TAM 718; https://wayback.archive-it.org/12904/*/https://www.beyondthepale.org/; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark in 2017. The accession number associated with this gift is 2017.033.
In 2019, https://www.beyondthepale.org/ was added to the web archive and captured through the use of Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. The accession number associated with this website is 2019.144.
In 2020, cassettes 718_1007 and 718_1008 were reported as missing.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Access to audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact special.collections@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
Appraisal
During processing in 2019, three optical discs were found to be unreadable and discarded.
Take Down Policy
Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.
If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.
If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the special.collections@nyu.edu.
Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.
About this Guide
Processing Information
In 2017, Beyond the Pale engaged archivist, curator, and historian, Rachel Mattson, to prepare the collection for donation. Mattson performed a collection assessment and developed an inventory of the collection which was supplied to NYU.
At the time of receipt in 2017, materials were originally housed in boxes grouped by years. At the time of accessioning, materials were moved into archival housing and a collection-level record was created to describe contents. Materials were also arranged by format and then grouped chronologically. Between the accession of these materials and processing, a small number of the materials were digitized.
During processing in 2019, materials were physically arranged to ensure chronological order by year in each format grouping. Undated materials were arranged at the end of each format grouping. ¼-inch audio reels were rehoused, and descriptive notations and labels from the original housing were transcribed. Housing with extensive notations were photocopied and filed in the "Audiovisual Documentation" folder (Box 33, Folder 1) with new unique identification numbers inscribed. A file-level inventory was created during processing to provide informative description of each audiovisual carrier. The titles were derived from original annotations on the physical media with enhancements from original inventory descriptions where appropriate. New archivist-designated identifiers were assigned to each item and physically attached to cases. If available, each title includes the original unique identifier created and provided by the creators (e.g., [1998-024]).
The optical discs were forensically imaged and analyzed, of which eight failed to image successfully. Of the eight, three were completely unreadable and deaccessioned. The Beyond the Pale website was archived to the Internet Archive using the Archive-It service. New York University Libraries follows professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity of the content.
During processing in 2019, the website was archived and added to the finding aid.
In 2020, NYU received a CLIR Recordings at Risk grant to digitize 720 audio recordings. The Media Preservation Unit prepared the materials and sent them to MediaPreserve in June of 2020. By February of 2021, all items were received from the vendor along with their digital files. Graduate student worker Lyric Evans-Hunter completed post-digitization processing for these items, which included adding digital objects, transfer technician notes, and original format metadata to the items' records.
