Happy Birthday, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!Detective fiction from the Partner Collectionsby Melanie J. Meyers, M.S., Senior Reference Librarian, Center for Jewish History “My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.” –from “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes” (1892) May 22, 1859 was the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes: the most celebrated sleuth…
In Honor of Yom Yerushalayim: five selections concerning Jerusalem from each of the five partners. Compiled by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian – Collections, Center for Jewish History Yom Yerushalayim commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem and Israeli control over the Old City. The victory in the Six-Day War resulted in the first time Jews took control of the city since the destruction of the…
Alice Davis Menken was “born to privilege in 1870 and [she] married into wealth in 1893,” as Michael D. Feldberg explains in Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History. Menken “dedicated her life to helping Jewish women less fortunate than herself" (p. 106). We can guess from Alice Davis Menken’s personal papers—which live here at the Center for Jewish History in the AJHS…
Die Haggadah des Kindes. (Click on title to view digitized version.) Leo Baeck Institute. Dayenu: A few Passover Haggadot would have been enough…really?by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian – Collections, Center for Jewish History As we prepare for the ritual Seder this evening, I started to reflect on the variations of Passover Haggadot and the vast number of them that we have…
To learn more about New York City and the Jews, visit the exhibition currently on view here at the Center. Click here to learn more. The above images are courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society. They also appeared in a 2009 New York Times blog entry on Passover. Click here to read that article.
The New Collosusby Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries sheWith…
Out of the Archives: “File Problems” in Tunis (1983)by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History This letter from the Tunis office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, or “the Joint”) is in response to a records management survey questionnaire. It describes the “file problems” encountered by the office staff there: A swift kick, a few choice words in Arabic,…
Out of the Archives: A Jewish Chaplain in Post-Liberation Dachauby Rachel C. Miller, Senior Project Archivist, Center for Jewish History One month after the liberation of Dachau, Army Chaplain Max Braude wrote this spirited letter to his wife, Eunice, recounting his day of relief work with 700 women survivors. Eunice Braude passed her husband’s letter on to Philip S. Bernstein, who was then the Executive…
The American Jewish Historical Society meets the U.S. War Department’s Military Intelligence Branchby Michael D. Montalbano, Institutional / Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History Although propaganda existed in a variety of forms prior to the 20th century, its scale and use of the technology during World War I was unprecedented. To counteract the intended effects of propaganda, governments established various defenses, the main one…
Out of the Archives: From Labor to Justiceby Rachel C. Miller, Senior Project Archivist, Center for Jewish History The quotidian cross-out on this letterhead represents a pivotal moment in U.S. immigration history, when, following the outbreak of war in Europe, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration deemed immigration a security concern over an economic one and transferred the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from the…