Lipsky, Louis, 1876-1963

Contains records on the formation, purpose, and activities of the American Jewish League for Israel, as reflected in organizational documents (including minutes), event literature, publications (including the AJLI newsletter, AJLI Bulletin, later called the AJLI News Bulletin and other titles), scholarship material, financial information, membership appeals, correspondence, media coverage, and photographs.

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.

The records of the People's Relief Committee for Jewish War Sufferers consist of correspondence with Jewish communities and relief organizations in Europe, Palestine, Cuba, South America, the United States, and Canada; as well as scrapbooks containing U.S. and Canadian Yiddish and English newspaper clippings and printed promotional literature pertaining to the fundraising activities of the People's Relief Committee in North America and abroad.

The bulk of the collection documents Kenen’s Zionist activities, his work with the United Nations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its predecessor organizations, and the Near East Report. Materials include correspondence, reports, newspaper clippings, publications, press releases, manuscripts, notes, photographs, speeches, and scrapbooks.

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.

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.