Goldsteins Digitize Vintage Photos

By COLlive reporter

In the 1960’s-1970’s, film for still cameras were quite expensive and they only delivered a limited amount of exposures per roll.

To best maximize the quantity of shots available per roll, Rabbi Yosef Goldstein (aka “Uncle Yossi”), a noted educator and resident of Crown Heights, bought himself an amateur 16mm movie camera which utilized small 3” rolls of film intended to record at approx. 24 fps (frames per second).

When played at full speed after they were developed the film would provide for about 2.5 minutes of program material. Rabbi Goldstein cleverly shot one image per frame, netting him more than 2,000 images from a single roll of movie film.

Rabbi Goldstein took his camera with him around town quite often, capturing history around Crown Heights, Kingston Avenue, 770, davening with the Rebbe, farbrengen, Lag B’Omer parades, summertime in the country and in Camp Gan Yisroel, not to mention copious family photos.

With the maturation and advance in digitizing technology coming to a peak, R’ Goldstein’s youngest son, Rabbi Zalman Goldstein (Chabad Classics producer and founder of The Jewish Learning Group) has given the reels into the lab for digitization to quench the thirst of Chassidim to see more of our Rebbe and the early years in Crown Heights and in Gan Yisroel.

Over the next several months, the Goldstein family will be graciously sharing these precious finds with the public in conjunction with COLlive, JEM and Derher Magazine. The estimated amount of photos are 14,000.