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.

Contains the memoirs and scrapbooks of Bluestone, concerning his numerous communal activities, especially those in the Zionist movement. A description of the collection was published by Hyman B. Grinstein in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 35 (1939), and a detailed inventory was prepared by Harry Bluestone (n.d.).

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 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 New York Board of Rabbis is a cross-denominational Jewish organization for rabbis that seeks to foster fellowship, provide educational enrichment, and rise above theological differences to strengthen and defend the Jewish community advancing its’ educational, religious, and social values. The collection documents the governance of the Board and its activities in serving the Jewish community of New York and at large.

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 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.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Shad Polier, including legal files from cases with which Polier was involved, particularly those concerning adoptions and civil liberties, articles and speeches by Polier, correspondence, and materials from several of the organizations with which Polier was affiliated, including the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress and the NAACP. These materials reflect his widespread participation with the civil liberties movement, equal rights and anti-discrimination law.

The Stefan Zweig-Siegmund Warburg Correspondence comprises an ample exchange of letters between the Austrian author Stefan Zweig and the German banker Siegmund Warburg. While their central topics are contemporary social and political developments, Zweig's perception of the various countries he travelled as well as their personal relationship can be glimpsed.

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.