Under the employ of the New York Kehillah, detective Abraham Shoenfeld infiltrated and documented Jewish crime rings, prostitution houses and gambling establishments from 1912 to 1917. For the American Jewish Committee from 1938 to 1964, he investigated anti-Semitic organizations and individuals. He also authored a controversial book about the New York crime world, The Joy Peddler, and he was at work on other pieces of fiction and his memoirs. The bulk of his papers consist of investigative reports and research for the American Jewish Committee, his manuscripts, and his collection of anti-Semitic literature.

The Anti-Semitic Literature Collection documents journalistic source materials (newspapers, newsletters, and illustrations) regarding views of anti-Semitism in the United States during the 20th-century. A few items from the 19th-century are included, particularly illustrations from Puck, Vanity Fair, and The Judge. Items are from various periodicals (i.e., The Dearborn Independent, Common Sense, The Crusader, The White American), organizations (i.e., American Nazi Party, the Christian Educational Association, and the White Party of America), and by many different authors (i.e., Father C.E. Coughlin, Benjamin Freedman, Otto H.F. Vollbehr). Additionally, this collection contains responses by American organizations to American and European anti-Semitism as well as documentation on the reaction of anti-Semitism in Canada.

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papers from his involvement with the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Information Bureau, published and unpublished writings, publications collected by Richards, articles about Richards and his activities, correspondence and articles from testimonial dinners in honor of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.

The Records of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites (1859-1878) documents the life cycle of the Board of Delegates, a Jewish civil rights organization located in New York City. The Board served in a two-fold function: acting as a central organization for American Jews and working on behalf of Jews abroad. To the latter end, the Delegates collaborated with the Committee of Deputies of British Jews and the French Alliance Israélite Universelle to provide for the relief and aid, civil, and religious rights of Jews throughout the Americas, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, particularly Romania, Ottoman Palestine including Jerusalem, and Morocco.

In the U.S., the Delegates were partially responsible for the appointment of the first Jewish Military Chaplain and surveyed member synagogues concerning the history and size of their congregation, the first organization to systematically record this type of information in the States. The Delegates merged with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) in 1878 and dissolved in 1925. Correspondents include Adolph Crémieux, Sir Moses Montefiore, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, Isaacs S. Myer, the Rev. Dr. Arnold Fischel, and Maj. General Benjamin Butler. Documents include correspondence, minutes, committee reports, memorials, announcements, surveys, some printed material including clippings, and a 1932 Rabbinical thesis on the Delegates by Allan Tarshish.

This collection contains the institutional records of the Houston Action for Soviet Jewry, mainly news clippings, correspondence, files about refuseniks, and various materials and programs for events which Houston Action for Soviet Jewry sponsored or was involved with. There are also some materials from other organizations set up to aid Soviet Jewry, including the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, the Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Many of these materials concern the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the 1990s, soon after the end of the Soviet Union.

Contains letters and articles in manuscript to Leeser pertaining to: his work as editor of The Occident, his translation of the Bible and his other literary works; discussions concerning Jewish law, the Reform movement in the United States and in Curaçao; Reform and Orthodox Judaism in Albany, N.Y., Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson's anti-Semitic comments in the United States Congress; the founding of a synagogue in San Francisco; the condition of Jews and Jewish education in America and in England; equal rights for Jews in Massachusetts and North Carolina; the controversy over the Touro Monument; slavery and the Civil War; and converts to Judaism. Also includes information on Israel Joseph Benjamin's trip in the U.S., 1859-1862; Isaac Mayer Wise; Sabato Morais; a manuscript guidebook on Jewish ritual slaughter written by Moses Julian in Barbados in 1820; Moses Montefiore's report on his mission to Rome on behalf of the Edgardo Mortara affair; articles discussing Christian theology; the Jews in Cochin, India and in China; a Latin preface to Leeser's Hebrew Bible; a Portuguese prayer against the evil eye; and poems on topics of Jewish interest.

Collection contains materials generated while Label Katz served in leadership positions with B’nai B’rith from the 1950s through the 1960s; best represented is his tenure as president of B’nai B’rith International between 1959 and 1965, during which Katz concentrated on challenges faced by Soviet Jews, and on the improvement of Jewish education. Materials consist of correspondence, speeches, clippings, photographs, minutes and reports.

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 records of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, the largest and most influential American Jewish organization created to coordinate efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry; the NCSJ containes its work today, under the name, the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ).

The bulk of the collection covers the NCSJ's activities from the early 1970s, through late 1980s. It includes meetings minutes, memoranda, correspondence, newsletters and publications of the NCSJ and its precursor organizations (primarily the American Jewish Committee on Soviet Jewry, 1964-1971), and the individual files maintained on Refusenik, prisoners of conscience, and Jewish émigrés.

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The collection also includes a considerable number of reports from the visits to the USSR by Soviet Jewry Movement activists and other. A significant part of the collection is represented by the audio recordings that include 13-minute programs on the WEVD Radio dedicated to Soviet Jewry topics and recordings of phone conversations with Refuseniks. There is also a considerable number of photographs, posters and publications, several film strips and VHS tapes.

The collection documents the National Jewish Welfare Board's (JWB) evolution from an organization founded in 1917 to provide support for soldiers in times of war to an agency involved in all aspects of Jewish life both in the United States and abroad. In 1990 JWB recreated itself as the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.

University professor, historian, and scholar Oscar I. Janowsky sought to understand Jewish culture and human rights in light of modern anti-Semitism, imperialism, and pluralistic states. Throughout his robust career he was a professor of history at the City College of New York, he also served as an advisor to League of Nations High Commissioner James G. McDonald, directed and authored major studies in the fields of Jewish community centers and education. The papers in this collection include his correspondence with colleagues and friends, research notes and article drafts, and his unpublished memoirs.

Philip Cowen (1853-1943) was a Conservative Jew who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Though he only studied for one year at the City College of New York, the literary-minded Cowen became the founder (with Rev. Dr. Frederic de Sola Mendes) and editor of the Conservative Jewish publication, the American Hebrew from its inception in 1879 until his resignation in 1906. In 1905, Cowen was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to the Ellis Island positions of Immigration Inspector on the Board of Special Inquiry, determining the fitness of émigrés to the United States, and later advanced to Inspector-In-Charge of the Division of Information for Employment and the Discharging and Information Division. In addition, Cowen was a member of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, was a founder of the The Judeans society, a secretary for B'nai B'rith, and published an autobiography entitled Memoirs of an American Jew (1932). Documents include writings and material on immigration, surveys of American leaders and intellectuals on Anti-Semitism, and background materials for articles written in the American Hebrew. The collection contains correspondence, articles, documents, official reports, telegrams, clippings, pamphlets, photographs, and handwritten notes.