In Honor of Veterans Day 2012by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian – Collections, Center for Jewish History The need to document those in our communities is a longstanding tradition in Judaism. Beginning in Biblical times there was the half-shekel annual accounting of all Jews where “the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less” (Exodus 30:15). In the…
Happy 126th birthday to the Statue of Liberty! Today also marks the end of a year worth of renovations to the Statue. The American Jewish Historical Society here at the Center holds the handwritten original of Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” (1883), which is the poem that graces the Statue of Liberty (installed on bronze plaque in 1903). The above image is of the…
In honor of Labor Day: select material pertaining to Samuel Gompers in the partner collectionsCompiled by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian – Collections, Center for Jewish History “The fact that organized labor as it exists in the late twentieth century is largely the product of the A[merican]F[ederation] of L[abor] and its leaders obscures the federation’s recent and inauspicious beginnings. What became the…
The American Jewish Historical Society series “American Jewish Portraits” has over 100 digitized daguerreotypes, photographs and paintings of Jewish individuals from the 18th to 20th centuries. Most are of the well-to-do, and they are clad in the latest fashions of the time period. Interestingly enough, it is impossible to discern them as Jewish, as the portraits give no clues to their religion.