Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America

This collection contains correspondence between Horace M. Kallen and many important individuals and organizations, as well as manuscripts, notes and other materials for speeches, financial documents, research materials, academic records, and various other assorted items. These materials serve to illustrate Kallen’s important role in philosophy, education, religion, and politics and his deep involvement with consumer rights, environmental controls, Jewish issues, and civil liberties.

This record group contains personal papers and special collections documenting individuals, both Hadassah members and non-Hadassah members, who were important to Hadassah. Much of the material forming the collections in this record group came from the administrative files of the national office of Hadassah, though some of the material was donated to Hadassah. Key individuals represented within this record group include Hadassah national board members Anna Tulin Elyachar, Bertha S. Schoolman, and Denise Tourover Ezekiel, as well as Jesse Zel Lurie who served as the first professional editor of Hadassah Magazine (originally Hadassah Newsletter) from 1947 to 1980.

The materials in this record group document the entirety of Hadassah’s history and work in Israel and the United States in photographs—prints, slides, glass lantern plates, and digital images.

This record group consists of printed materials and publications, produced by Hadassah projects and departments, Young Judaea, and other Zionist organizations from 1911-2011. Materials in the record group include periodicals, newsletters, greeting cards, certificates, invitations, brochures, pamphlets, catalogs, and other professionally produced printed materials. Besides Young Judaea, projects documented include Hadassah Magazine, the Hadassah Medical Organization, Youth Aliyah, the Jewish National Fund, and Hadassah Israel Education Services.

The Rahn Family Collection centers on the lives of Alfred and Lilli (née Bechmann) Rahn, but also contains many documents of their parents, siblings, and even more distant family members. It also documents the family members' attempts to receive restitution for their losses. The collection includes a large amount of correspondence, official, personal, and legal documents, photographs and photo albums, financial documentation, manuscripts and fragments of creative and academic writing, family trees and genealogical notes, newspaper clippings, poetry, educational certificates and diplomas, texts of lectures, teaching materials, a few recipes, and other papers.

This collection contains correspondence, memoranda, public statements, "press kits," press digests, reports, newsletters, pamphlets and program materials issued by a mainstream Zionist organization promoting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, using political pressure, by legal means.

The National Honey Board's 1993 recipe contest held in conjunction with Hadassah magazine to celebrate the long tradition of honey in Jewish cooking. Collection consists of the Board's press releases, and recipes submitted by U.S. Hadassah chapters for dishes from Hadassah cookbooks in which honey is used as the primary sweetener.

Spanning from its inception and incorporation in 1925 to its culmination in 2002, the Queens Jewish Center collection highlights this congregation's wide-range of religiously oriented and secular educational activities, ceremonies, developments, events, and programs. Predominant in this collection are the reports, bulletins, financial, legal and property records, and meeting minutes. In addition, books, clippings, correspondence, pamphlets, programs, publications, negatives photographs are also contained with in this collections.

The Robison Family Fapers reflect various activities of Adolf C. and Ann Green Robison in civic organizations, Jewish communal life, Jewish national and international affairs, and individually in the arts. The collection contains information on the origins of the United Nations; and on aid to Israel before, during, and after the War of Independence. The materials include correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, financial documents, newspaper clippings, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, musical scores, and play scripts.

Collection primarily consists of labels and stamps from various political or religious Jewish organizations. Additional material includes two Judaica catalogs, correspondence, pamphlets, and stock certificates. Of interest is a map showing places of Jewish interest, circa. 1900. Six stamps portray the work of Arthur Szyk.

This collection contains the papers of Samuel J. Citron, dramatist and educator.

Collection is composed of addresses, speeches, testimony, correspondence, press releases, and Congressional Record excerpts.

The papers of Seymour Halpern reflect a wide range of issues including problems posed by Palestininan refugees, defeating Arab boycotts, cutting off foreign aid to the United Arab Republic and President Abdel Nasser of Egypt, denouncing U.S. arm shipments to Arab states, protesting Egyptian intervention in Yemen, responding to France's withdraw from NATO, celebrating Israel's anniversaries, supporting Hadassah, eulogizing J.F. Kennedy, assisting Jews in the Soviet Union, ratifying the Genocide Convention, working towards domestic immigration reform, urging the dispatch of an international peace-keeping force in South Vietnam, and establishing a U.S. Committee on Human Rights. Of particular interest is 1963 correspondence between Halpern and Richard M. Nixon regarding Nixon's visit to the United Arab Republic.

Contains a transcript and two cassette tapes.

Young Judaea is the oldest Zionist youth organization in the United States, established as a national organization in 1909 by the Federation of American Zionists. It was supported by Hadassah, including direct financial sponsorship from 1967-2011. The major aims of Young Judaea throughout its history have been to advance the cause of Zionism, to further the mental, moral, and physical development of Jewish youth, and to promote Jewish culture and ideals in accordance with Jewish traditions. Young Judaea has remained non-partisan and non-denominational, embracing and recruiting Jewish youth from all backgrounds.

The Youth Aliyah Records in the Hadassah Archives document Hadassah's work with multiple international organizations to rescue Jewish children from continental Europe to Palestine from 1933-1945. The collection also documents Hadassah's involvement with Youth Aliyah since 1946 in providing residential, educational, vocational, rehabilitative and therapeutic care for displaced and at-risk youth from around the world.

The material in this record group was culled from Hadassah's Central Files in Israel in the early 1980s to document Hadassah's role in Zionist history. Originally formed from a Zionist women's study group, the first Hadassah chapter in New York had a strong relationship with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA; then known as the Federation of American Zionists). The material in this record group documents Hadassah's relationship to the ZOA and to other Zionist organizations in the United States, Europe, and Palestine/Israel, particularly in the years leading up to Israeli statehood in 1948. Other subjects addressed in this record group include the founding of Hadassah; World War II, particularly relating to Jewish emigration and refugees; the founding of the United Nations and the debate over recognition of a Jewish state; the partition of Palestine; and Arab-Jewish relations. Included are articles, clippings, convention resolutions, correspondence, diary extracts, memorandums, minutes, press releases, printed ephemera, publications, reports, and speeches.