Schiff, Jacob H. (Jacob Henry), 1847-1920

This collection is comprised of papers pertaining to Admiral Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, his career, and his community and organizational activities. He belonged to such groups as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Temple Emanu-El in New York, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Jewish Agricultural Society, and the Union of Hebrew Congregations.

His papers include extensive correspondence, organizational and institutional records, photographs, and publications which document his personal and public life as well as American Jewish issues that he was involved with such as relief efforts for Jewish refugees from Central Europe, interest and involvement in the Reform movement, and endeavors to combat anti-Semitism, especially as propagated by Father Charles E. Coughlin and Henry Ford.

This is the collection of Arthur A. Goren, a historian and professor of American Jewish history at the Hebrew University and Columbia University. This collection consists of his research material and professional files from his academic pursuits and career as a professor, primarily at Columbia University. Included in the collection are copies of articles and photocopies of archival material used for research, drafts of speeches and manuscripts, handwritten and typed research notes, correspondence, clippings, photographs, and teaching and course material such as syllabi, readings, notes, and bibliographies.

The collection contains Bernard G. Richards personal and official correspondence, papers from his involvement with the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Information Bureau, published and unpublished writings, publications collected by Richards, articles about Richards and his activities, correspondence and articles from testimonial dinners in honor of Richards, and photographs. Significant correspondents include Joseph Barondess, Louis D. Brandeis, Vladimir Jabotinsky, J.L. Magnes, Louis Marshall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jacob H. Schiff, Philip Slomovitz, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Morris Winchovsky, and Stephen S. Wise.

Contains text of Schurz's address at dedication of the Montefiore Home, New York City, on Dec. 18, 1888. Portions of the address were published in The Jewish Messenger, v. 64, no. 25 (Dec. 21, 1888), p. 5-6. Also contains correspondence with American Jewish leaders including Jacob Schiff and Oscar Straus.

Collection contains correspondence relating to the committee's fund-raising efforts throughout the United States to aid survivors of the Russian pogroms, both in Russia, and in the United States, with particular focus on orphaned children. Contains information on the condition of the Jews in Russia and Roumania during and after the pogroms; on the relief and removal activities in Europe, in general, and Russia, in particular; on the self-defense movement and defense fund; immigration procedures and work of the Industrial Removal Office; and some financial and executive committee reports.

The officers of the Committee were Oscar Solomon Straus, chairman, Jacob Henry Schiff, treasurer, and Cyrus Leopold Suizberger, secretary.

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.

Contains a signed letter to Louis Monash concerning immigration to the United States (1912), a signed letter of thanks to Everett P. Wheeler acknowledging a pamphlet on the Holy Land (1912), and two manuscript letters to William G. McAdoo, Sevretary of the Treasury, on various matters (1915, 1918).

Louis Marshall, a leader in the American Jewish community, was born in Syracuse, New York. He moved to New York City and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1877. In 1894 he joined the law firm of Guggenheimer and Untermyer, later becoming a partner. Marshall practiced Reform Judaism. He served as president and strategist of the American Jewish Committee; Chairman of the Commission of Immigration in New York State; and led the opposition concerning the establishment of literacy tests for new immigrants. Marshall was a defender of Leo Frank, a negotiator in the Peace Conference of 1919, and attempted to block Henry Ford's publication, the Dearborn Independent, due to anti-Semitic rhetoric. Though Marshall was a somewhat controversial figure in the American Jewish community, he worked diligently on issues regarding Jewish immigration and rights.

The collection contains correspondence, memoranda, pamphlets, minutes, reports, and copies of Congressional bills.

Lucien Wolf (1857-1930) was a diplomat, foreign affairs expert, journalist, and historian. As the secretary of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association (earlier the Conjoint Foreign Committee), Lucien Wolf took a leading role in the efforts of Western Jewry to aid persecuted Jews in Eastern Europe. He was also a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), where he helped to draft the minorities treaties guaranteeing the rights of Jews and other ethnic and religious minority groups. David Mowshowitch (1887-1957) was Lucien Wolf's secretary and aide at the Joint Foreign Committee for many years and continued to work for the Joint Foreign Committee until the 1950s. The collection consists of the papers of Lucien Wolf and David Mowshowitch, as well as fragmentary records of the Joint Foreign Committee. The material includes personal papers, correspondence, reports, memoranda, minutes of meetings, copies of articles, and press clippings. The documents pertain to the situation of persecuted Jews throughout the world, most notably the efforts of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association to aid the Jews of Eastern Europe, and to the Peace Conference at Paris in 1919 and the minorities treaties. There is also material on Lucien Wolf's and David Mowshowitch's other activities, most importantly Lucien Wolf's career as a journalist and as a historian of the Jewish community in Britain.

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.

The Baron de Hirsch Fund Records document the organization's involvement in the planning of agricultural communities across the United States and to some extent in South America; the founding and administrative dealings of agricultural and trade schools; the establishment of the Jewish Agricultural Society; and the business records of the Fund itself. In addition, the collection documents the protection offered to immigrants through port work, relief, temporary aid, promotion of suburban industrial enterprises and removal from urban centers through the Industrial Removal Office, land settlement, agricultural training, and trade and general education. In this respect, the collection is of major interest for Jewish genealogists as it documents a number of individual immigrants. In addition, the collection contains documentation on the administration and organization of the fund, documentation on Jewish farming colonies such as the Jewish Agricultural Society, Woodbine Colony and Agricultural School, and documentation on the Baron de Hirsch Trade School. In addition, the collection contains blueprints and photographs of facilities.

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.

The Galveston immigration records document the attempt of the Jewish Immigrant Information Bureau, working in cooperation with several other Jewish organizations, to receive Jewish immgrants through the port of Galveston, Texas rather than New York City. The papers further describe the JIIB's efforts to resettle the immigrants in communities throughout the United States. Papers include ship passenger lists, correspondence, and statistical reports, as well as papers dealing with individual immigration cases.

The collection consists of two manuscripts by Lothar Salin regarding the Salin family and the Jewish community of the small Bavarian town of Thuengen.

Primarily correspondence with members of Congress and government officials concerning anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad. Also includes correspondence with prominent American Jews, including Benjamin F. Peixotto, Jacob Henry Schiff, Oscar Solomon Straus, and Leo N. Levi; , and manuscript copies of speeches and articles, published in revised form in Selected addresses and papers (Cincinnati : Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1926).