Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Shapell Manuscript Foundation (SMF) is a non-profit independent educational organization dedicated to collecting and researching historical documents and original manuscripts. It focuses on the histories of the United States and the Holy Land, with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Shapell Manuscript Collection includes letters written by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy, as well as materials related to Mark Twain and Albert Einstein. The collection is particularly rich with items from the Civil War era.
The Shapell Roster Project is ongoing research into Jewish Civil War soldiers and their stories. It builds on a roster published by Simon Wolf in 1895, using modern research tools to expand and correct it. The Union section was published online in 2022, and Confederate data was expected by 2025.
The Foundation has collaborated with the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the New-York Historical Society, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and the National Library of Israel at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Items have been loaned for major exhibitions including the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, which toured from February 2009 to April 2011.
The Foundation is associated with Lincoln and the Jews: A History, co-authored by Professor Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell. Other connected publications include studies of 19th-century Jerusalem travelers and American consuls in Jerusalem.
The Foundation presented Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray, an Indigo Films production released in 2011. It is also connected to Lincoln's Last Days and The Mortal Presidents, as well as a film about Mark Twain and other American travelers to the Holy Land.