Today, the Center's archives and collections constitute the largest and most comprehensive body of information on Jewish art and material culture in existence.

[1] The center was an outcome of Narkiss's iconographical research of medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, which he initiated with Professor Gabrielle Sed-Rajna in 1974.

Under her leadership, the CJA undertook many research expeditions to post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe, in order to measure endangered synagogues and tombstones in regions, which were previously inaccessible to western scholars.

The documentation projects in Germany were done in cooperation with the Department of Architectural History at the Technical University in Braunschweig, headed by Professor Harmen H. Thies.

The Index currently contains seven thematic divisions: Historic Synagogues of Europe,[9] Catalogue of Wall Paintings in Central and East European Synagogues (by Boris Khaimovich),[10] Catalogue of Illuminated Esther Scrolls (by Dagmara Budzioch),[11] Slovenian Jewish Heritage,[12] Gross Family Collection,[13] Kurt and Ursula Schubert Archive of Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts,[14] and a database of Holocaust Memorial Monuments.