Wise, Stephen S. (Stephen Samuel), 1874-1949

The Papers of Bernard Calonius Ehrenreich, a Rabbi and civic leader in Montgomery, Alabama, document his personal and professional life over seven decades, and highlights his involvment in a broad range of organizations and activities. The collection is valuable to those researching topics such as Zionism; Progressivism; boys' camps; Montgomery, Alabama's Jewish community; Christian-Jewish relations in the South; and soldiers' correspondence from World War I and World War II. In addition, Ehrenreich's involvment in organizations such as the National Jewish Welfare Board; National American Woman Suffrage Association; Intercollegiate Menorah Association; Federation of American Zionists; and Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity are documented within the collection as well as postcards displaying various Jewish images.

The General Jewish Council was an umbrella organization founded by the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, and Jewish Labor Committee in order to coordinate their rights defense activities.

The bulk of the records in this collection date between from 1938-1944, the active years of the Council. Materials consist primarily of correspondence, minutes, memoranda, and reports.

Born in Arkansas and raised in Pennsylvania, Cyrus Adler was a prominent Jewish scholar, educator, and leader. A nephew of the Philadelphian Sulzbergers (Mayer and David), Adler developed an interest in libraries, Semitics, and Assyriology, going on to earn a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins. In 1888, Adler began work at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C., and eventually became the President of Dropsie College in Philadelphia. Adler was active in the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the United Synagogue, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, The Jewish Encyclopedia, and the National Jewish Welfare Board. He also participated in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

This collection represents a small portion of Adler's papers, with materials concerning Jewish activism, Conservative Judaism, and Jewish scholarship and history in America. The collection contains correspondence, page proofs, manuscripts, and published articles, clippings, notes, speeches, and ephemera.

Collection consists of three speeches delivered by Stephen S. Wise, Horace M. Kallen, and Hayim Fineman, at the first anniversary dinner of the Jewish Frontier.

Contains the memoirs and scrapbooks of Bluestone, concerning his numerous communal activities, especially those in the Zionist movement. A description of the collection was published by Hyman B. Grinstein in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 35 (1939), and a detailed inventory was prepared by Harry Bluestone (n.d.).

The Joseph Shubow Collection documents the life and professional activities of Joseph Shubow, military Chaplain, leader of the Congregation B’nai Moshe, Boston, MA and a prominent American Zionist leader. The collection includes correspondence, documents, lists, writings, speeches and sermons notes, photographs, and printed materials. Materials constituting the collection reflect various aspects of Joseph Shubow’s personal and professional life, religious leadership and writings in the fields of Judaism and Jewish history.

The Lipsky Family Papers reflect the professional and personal activities of Eleazar Lipsky (1911-1993), his father, Zionist leader Louis Lipsky (1876-1963), and his mother, Charlotte Lipsky (1879-1959), as well as other family members. Eleazar Lipsky was a lawyer, novelist, Zionist and the head of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the early 1960s. While working on a multi-part family novel, Eleazar Lipsky gathered and arranged much of the family material in this collection. In addition to family history, the collection contains information on the American Zionist movement, Bernard Richards’s role in the Committee of Jewish Delegations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and various legal battles involving such parties as the Jewish Week, the American Examiner, Doubleday, Philip Hochstein and Lillie Shultz. The materials include correspondence, an unfinished manuscript, legal transcripts, clippings, speeches, research materials, financial documents, miscellaneous writings and a few photographs.

This collection contains Marvin Lowenthal's correspondence, journals, diaries, documents, photographs, memorabilia, and printed materials relating to his life, writings, Zionist activities, and relief work on behalf of German Jewry. Includes material on his youth, school work, and college years, as well as autobiographical writings and family correspondence containing information on Horace Kallen and early 20th century Zionist activities. Of particular note is his later correspondence with Jacob Billikopf, Jerome Frank, Horace M. Kallen, Elmer Rice, Eugene C. Taylor, and Stephen S. Wise.

The Papers of Max J. Kohler (1871-1934) document his life's work as lawyer, historian, writer, researcher, and defender of Jewish and immigrant rights. Correspondents include many of Kohler's contemporaries in the field of history and immigration law including Cyrus Adler; William Taft; John Bassett Moore; Mortimer Schiff; David Hunter Miller; Baron and Baroness de Hirsch; the Straus Family including Oscar Straus; Luigi Luzzatti; Leon Huhner; and Julian Mack. Subjects include U.S. immigration law, American-Jewish history, Col. Alfred Dreyfus, Haym Salomon, Ellis Island, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, the publication God in Freedom, international treaties, and the Peace Conference of 1919.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of William Edlin, editor of The Day and a prominent Socialist. It includes correspondence with individuals and with organizations, newspaper clippings, manuscripts of works by Edlin and by others as well as translations done by Edlin, and some of Edlin’s personal documents. These materials relate to Edlin’s involvement with The Day, with the Socialist Party, the Workmen’s Circle, various labor and Zionist organizations, literary clubs and activities, and with music, art and drama.

The collection represents the papers of Morris David Waldman (1879-1963), a rabbi, social worker and communal leader, who was appointed executive secretary of one of the main Jewish defense organizations, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), in 1928. The executive secretary had top executive function at the organization and was in charge of working out and implementing the organization’s projects and policies regarding monitoring the civil and human rights of the Jews, and intervening on behalf of the Jews both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1942, Waldman was promoted to executive vice-president, a position he held until his retirement in 1945. The Morris Waldman Files relate to all of Waldman's activities as acting executive secretary and vice-president of the AJC.

The Industrial Removal Office was created as part of the Jewish Agricultural Society to assimilate immigrants into American society, both economically and culturally. It worked to employ all Jewish immigrants. The collection contains administrative and financial records, immigrants' removal records, and correspondence. A database has been constructed to search for persons removed by the Industrial Removal Office.

Consists of a diary (92 pages) kept by Richard J.H. Gottheil, September 28, 1897-March 21, 1899, containing notations relating to his Zionist activities, the Jewish Religious School Union (organized ca. 1897), the Jewish encyclopedia and Helpful Thoughts, a Jewish monthly for children of which he was co-editor, and to his correspondence and association with Stephen S. Wise, Bernard C. Ehrenreich, Henry Pereira Mendes and Julia Richman. Also contains a manuscript notebook of poems transcribed by his wife, Emma L. Gottheil, and a manuscript copy of the Book of Job.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Shad Polier, including legal files from cases with which Polier was involved, particularly those concerning adoptions and civil liberties, articles and speeches by Polier, correspondence, and materials from several of the organizations with which Polier was affiliated, including the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress and the NAACP. These materials reflect his widespread participation with the civil liberties movement, equal rights and anti-discrimination law.

Family papers of the American Sephardic Solis and Cohen families, composed of materials created through circa. 19860, through to the 1930s, with some additional materials prior to and after the time period. Contains correspondence, diaries, journals, medical papers, and eulogies of the family; materials relating to Zionist and Jewish organizations in the United States and abroad; genealogical research and correspondence of several famous Jewish personas; and artifacts, art work and other ephemera.

The collection has been arranged according to the following broad subject areas: personal affairs; speeches, sermons, and articles, both manuscript and published; the Free Synagogue in New York City; the Jewish Institute of Religion; American Jewish affairs; relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities; New York City affairs; United States affairs; the press (both Jewish and non-Jewish); world affairs; the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress; refugees; Zionism; Palestine and Israel; arts and letters; and individual corrspondence of a general nature.

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.