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.

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 collection contains documents relating to Isaac A. Hourwich’s role as an economist, publicist, statistician, lawyer, author, and authority on immigration, as well as his involvement with the labor movement and the formation of the American Jewish Congress. There are reports, minutes of meetings, memoranda, clippings and correspondence, and manuscripts and articles about Jewish labor, Socialism, Russia, Marxism, immigration, and other subjects. These materials demonstrate Hourwich’s important role in American labor, immigration theory, and political and economic theory.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of rabbi, Hebrew scholar, author, and editor Israel Elfenbein. These materials include correspondence with and relating to congregations, Hebrew periodicals, organizations, Elfenbein’s writings, personal correspondence, sermons, clippings, and manuscripts by Elfenbein and by other writers.

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.