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 feel…
Out of the Box: Four Unique Passover Items At the Center for Jewish History, there are tens of thousands of boxes in our partners’ archival and museum collections. Our series, Out of the Box, showcases some of the remarkable treasures and stories tucked away inside. In collaboration with Yeshiva University Museum, we had intended this March to highlight just a few of the over 230 Passover items, which span over 200 years,…
Happy New Year from the Center for Jewish History. We’ve dug into our partners’ vast collections to find a wonderful selection of vintage Rosh Hashanah greeting cards to celebrate the Jewish New Year of 5773, which begins at sundown on Sunday, September 16, 2012. The colorful cards date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and offer nostalgic greetings in English, Hebrew and…
By James Benjamin Nadel, Communications Outreach Associate How do you reach out to friends and family for the New Year? Do you write them an email or make a call? This year you might, following a long Jewish tradition, consider sending an illustrated postcard. Such was the norm for many Jews living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A collection of Rosh…
In Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dayby David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Reference Services Research Coordinator, Center for Jewish History Jews have had a long history of supporting the civil rights movement. From heavily Jewish leadership during the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, to Jews participating in the March on Washington in 1963, to efforts of…
