By Margaret Tilley, Genealogy Specialist and Curatorial Projects Assistant A Shul on Every Corner: Remembering Synagogues of the Lower East Side Above, a boy stands before the oldest surviving synagogue building in New York City, located at 172 Norfolk Street. What was then a neighborhood fixture brimming with debates about Jewish identity and rite has, like many other Lower East Side synagogues, since faced…
June 10, 2024 By Julia Schulte-Werning, 2023-24 Bookhalter Graduate Fellow Caring for Moroccan Jews: A Photo Album on Jewish Medical Aid in (Post)Colonial Morocco The YIVO collections include a photo album that the Jewish aid organization OSE-Morocco had sent to the United States in September 1956 [see below]. Neatly pinned and accurately labeled, the images reveal the panorama of health care activities for Moroccan…
May 30, 2024 By Ludwig Decke, 2023 CJH-Fordham University Fellow Fighting Antisemitism on the Eve of Decolonization In the late spring of 1955, West London Synagogue’s Stern Hall hummed with a flurry of voices in various languages. Over one hundred representatives of Jewish communities and organizations, originating from twenty countries, huddled behind long rows of tables in the smoke-filled conference room. [image above: Collection…
By Ella Jordan-Smith Reference Services Librarian, Center for Jewish History Building a Jewish Union and the ILGWU In 1900, eleven delegates representing seven major local unions in the Northeast convened to form the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. All eleven of these delegates were Jewish men (the “ladies” in the organization’s name refers to the garments, not the constituency) who represented unions composed of primarily…
