By Moriah Amit, M.S.L.I.S., Senior Reference Services Librarian, Genealogy Coordinator, Center for Jewish History Did any of your Jewish ancestors settle in New York City? Have you wondered what life was like for those ancestors who settled on the Lower East Side or any of the dozens of other Jewish neighborhoods that emerged in the city’s five boroughs in the late 19th and early…
Decorative embroidery by Rose Biegeleisen Axelrod, depicting German ruler and allies during World War I. Translation from the German: “We are united and no power can separate us. Our armies have forced their way, through storm and darkness, to victory." Collection of Yeshiva University Museum Gift of Sylvia A. Herskowitz To mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I and to consider the war’s…
All images: Collection of Yeshiva University Museum A sizeable portion of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who streamed into New York at the turn of the 20th century found work in the city’s expanding garment industry. Although only about 10% were actual trained tailors, many Jewish immigrants held experience in both producing clothing–since the garment industry in Russia was one of the only businesses open to Jews–and held industrial…
Attention foodies! Apply now for Tent: Food NYC. Through cooking demos, writing workshops, food crawls, and museum visits you’ll be immersed in the diverse world of Jewish food culture from October 19-26th. The program is free and open to all Americans and Canadians ages 21-30. Hurry! The deadline is June 29, 2014.
Ready, set, read! The 16th Street Book Club is open to all. On Tuesday, July 15th at 7pm at the Center, 15 West 16th Street in NYC), we’ll be discussing Liana Finck’s graphic novel A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York. Drawn from letters from the widely popular Forward advice column “A Bundle of Letters,” Finck illustrates an imaginative conversation with the “Yiddish ‘Dear…
Have you heard StoryCorps’s riveting recordings of people with fascinating tales to tell? On June 11th and 12th at the Center for Jewish History, we’ll give you a chance to preserve your family history on professionally produced audio. Don’t miss the rare opportunity to work with this revolutionary oral-history project! There are just a few recordings each day. To request a spot, please email gievents@cjh.org…
Above: Delegates to National Jewish Youth Institute, held at Emma Kaufmann Camp, circa 1950. Image: National Jewish Welfare Board Records, courtesy of American Jewish Historical Society. Apply now to be a Junior Scholar at the Center for Jewish History this July! Space is limited. The Junior Scholars Program at the Center for Jewish History is a free, two-week program open to any high school student who…
Have you ever been surprised that Wikipedia doesn’t cover a particular Jewish woman of note? Maybe you’ve been tempted to improve existing Wikipedia articles about Jewish women, or you’re curious about Wikipedia in general. Perhaps you’d like to check out some of the resources the Center’s partners hold on Jewish women. The Center for Jewish History invites you to join us, either on-site in New…
The Center for Jewish History is pleased to be the recipient of a 2013 digitization grant from the Metropolitan New York Library Council. The Center’s project, “American Soviet Jewry Movement in New York: Posters and Photographs,” will involve the digitization of dozens of political posters and rare photographs from the archives of American Jewish Historical Society, one of its partner organizations. The materials to…
Women in the Performing ArtsBertha Kalich: Star of the New York Stageby J.D. Arden, M.L.I.S. candidate, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History Above image: Yiddish theater poster for Bertha Kalich in Midway at Irving Place Theatre. c/o American Jewish Historical Society. Bertha Kalich was born in 1874 in Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, what is today Lvov, Ukraine. Her father…