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Fighting Antisemitism on the Eve of Decolonization

May 30, 2024
By Ludwig Decke, 2023 CJH-Fordham University Fellow

Fighting Antisemitism on the Eve of Decolonization

In the late spring of 1955, West London Synagogue’s Stern Hall hummed with a flurry of voices in various languages. Over one hundred representatives of Jewish communities and organizations, originating from twenty countries, huddled behind long rows of tables in the smoke-filled conference…

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Building a Jewish Union and the ILGWU

By Ella Jordan-Smith

Reference Services Librarian, Center for Jewish History

Building a Jewish Union and the ILGWU

In 1900, eleven delegates representing seven major local unions in the Northeast convened to form the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. All eleven of these delegates were Jewish men (the “ladies” in the organization’s name refers to the garments, not…

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Blog Post

Selling Chanukah in America

By Cassia Kisshauer
Senior Reference Services Librarian, Special Collections

Selling Chanukah in America

As Chanukah transformed in 20th century America from a smaller, home-based festival to a popular public holiday, businesses saw an opportunity to manufacture and market decorations and gifts to Jewish consumers.

In the mid-19th century, new waves of German Jewish immigrants focused on Christmas as a winter holiday, in order to…

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“Yours very respectaly, M. Blum”: Correspondence between a New Jersey Jewish Farmer and the Industrial Removal Office, 1902-1905

By Lauren Gilbert, Director of Public Services, Center for Jewish History

“Yours very respectaly, M. Blum”: Correspondence between a New Jersey Jewish Farmer and the Industrial Removal Office, 1902-1905

In response to the massive waves of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, leaders of the German-Jewish community in New York City founded the rather forbiddingly named Industrial Removal…

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Center for Jewish History
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