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 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 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.