Letter from General John Tyler to Bernard Judah, remembering Samual Judah’s generous support in the struggle for independence. 1824. From the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society.
This image is featured in Contributors to the Cause, a traveling exhibition about the history of Jewish philanthropy in the United States presented by the Center for Jewish History and made possible by The David Berg Foundation.
Celebrating Archivesby Susan Woodland, Senior Archivist, American Jewish Historical Society October is Archives Month, and the archives community in metropolitan New York celebrated the week of October 7th with an extensive list of repository tours, programs, exhibits, a symposium on Disaster Recovery inspired by last fall’s superstorm Sandy, and an award ceremony. See the website of the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York (ART)…
Food is a way to maintain cherished traditions and connect to ancestors, particularly for marginalized groups. It can also be a method to adapt to a new environment. The American South has a rich Jewish history dating back to the 17th century. Port cities like Charleston, which until about 1820 had the largest Jewish population in the U.S., were home to some of the…
Death masks, molded from plaster in the first hours after death before the features have stiffened or atrophied, were used for centuries to preserve the appearance of nobility and other eminent persons as models for posthumous sculptures or painted portraits. In the 19th century, these unnervingly accurate impressions came to be prized in their own right, and the practice of creating death masks as…
