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history

When Herschel Became Harry: How to Find your Ancestors’ Original Names

By Moriah Amit, Senior
Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator

Although the notion that our immigrant ancestors’ names were changed by clerks at Ellis Island has been debunked time and again by noted scholars in Jewish genealogy (see References below), this myth remains pervasive in the stories that American Jews tell about their family history. The truth, that most of our immigrant ancestors chose…

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“We must do our share in thecommunity of mankind”—the voice of Bayard Rustin in the American Soviet Jewry movement

By Andrey Filimonov

Audio recording: Public Service Announcements urging support for Soviet Jewry by Rita Moreno, Bayard Rustin, Sam Levenson and Alan King, recently digitized at the Center for Jewish History. Link to digital audio file: http://digital.cjh.org/4552838

Originally found on an open-reel tape, in the Records of National Conference on Soviet Jewry, I-181A, Box 369, Tape number M15.

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Into the Woods: Blau-Weiss, the German Zionist Hiking Group

image

Image: Courtesy of Leo Baeck Institute

By James Benjamin Nadel, Communications Outreach Associate

As the summer ends, and opportunities to explore the great outdoors grow fewer, I wanted to draw attention to the little discussed history of Jewish hiking organizations. Several of these youth groups existed in pre-World War II Europe, but one stands out in particular for…

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