Russia

This collection contains papers of Abraham Moshe Bernstein, a renowned cantor, choir master, composer of Jewish liturgical and secular music, music teacher, musicologist, writer, and translator. The bulk of the materials consists of Bernstein’s liturgical compositions and arrangements in both published and manuscript form, as well as a substantial collection of manuscripts and published works by various composers and arrangers. The materials include Hasidic folk songs and melodies, religious songs, Jewish hymns, popular songs, children’s songs, operettas, liturgical pieces, and musical exercises for students; choral volumes and partbooks; unidentified and fragmented musical manuscripts; manuscripts of Bernstein’s own writings; personal correspondence; a photo of Bernstein on his deathbed; secular and religious songs, Sabbath hymns, Hasidic folk songs and melodies, assembled by Bernstein for the S. Ansky Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in Vilna.

The collection contains photographs and video recordings taken by Kansas City, Missouri rabbi, Alan L. Cohen, during his trips to visit the Jewish Communities in the Former Soviet Union in 1989 and 1993. Included in Rabbi Cohen’s papers are photographs of a protest demonstration organized by Refuseniks in front of the Moscow Kremlin in 1989.

Baron Horace (Naftali Herz) de Gunzburg Collection consists of diverse materials that pertain to the state of Jews in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century and to the philanthropic activities of Horace and Joseph Gunzburgs. Materials comprising the collection shed light on the Gunzburg family's involvement in improving Jewish education, civil rights movement, and their efforts to improve general well being of the Jews in the Russian Empire. Bulk of the collections consists of materials pertaining to the activities of the Hevrah Mefitsei Haskalah (Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia, Rus. Обшество для Распространения Просвещения Между Евреями в России) and to the Committee for the Improvement of Daily Life of Jews in the North-West Region (Комиссия по Улучшению Повседневной Жизни Евреев в Северо-Западном Регионе)

This Collection consists primarily of English, German, Hebrew, and French language correspondence concerning Reform Judaism, Zionism; the founding of the American Jewish Historical Society; the Jewish Publication Society; B'nai B'rith; the legal position of Jews in England and the United States with particular reference to the Naturalization Acts; the religious and social life and the history of Jews in Russia and Poland; Bible readings in public schools; the study of Jesus in Jewish Sabbath Schools; anti-slavery issues in the Fremont Campaign in 1856; and other correspondence pertaining to his numerous activities.

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 materials pertaining to the life and career of Boris Smolar, a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and an author of children's books.

Emigration 1864-1952: This collection - encompassing about 90 years - contains papers about the situation and persecution of Jews in Eastern European countries (Russia, Poland, Roumania, Bulgaria, Lithuania). Papers describe the activities of various relief organizations. There are more than 170 papers (ca.900 pages), about half of them written in German, about 30 each in French or English, over 20 in Yiddish and some in Polish. A printed appeal of the Reichsausschuss fuer Russisch-Juedische Fluechtlingshilfe, Berlin (1929) carries among others the signatures of Leo Baeck and ALbert Einstein. (VI, 16).

The collection consists of family papers pertaining to a number of Jewish families from the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and France. Included here are vital documents, personal, professional and financial correspondence, family trees, and financial documents

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.

These are papers presented at a symposium, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, held in Haifa, Israel, on March 13-15, 1983. Manuscripts from three additional presentations were not submitted for this collection.

The collection contains the records of the Vilna branch of the Hevrah Mefitsei Haskalah, an educational and publishing organization, established in 1863 to propagate secular knowledge and acculturation into the Russian society among the Jews of the Pale of Settlement. The Vilna Branch was organized in 1909 to assist Jewish education in Vilna and vicinity. During World War I and after Vilna became a part of independent Poland, the organization continued to propagate secular education and maintain schools, libraries and teachers’ courses. The materials include minutes, correspondence, memoranda, programs, leaflets, announcements, and clippings.

Isaac Leib Goldberg Collection documents Isaac Goldberg’s active participation in the international Zionist movement. It also sheds light on his professional activities as a lawyer in the Russian Empire. The collection consists of circular letters, official documents, correspondence, court documents and Power of Attorney, leaflets, announcements, reports, minutes of meetings, financial reports and tables, balance sheets and Annual Reports, lists, and memoranda.

The collection contains family trees of the extended Billstein family in Europe and in the United States.

Joseph Bornstein was one of the most accomplished journalists of Weimar Germany. His criticism of the political and social conditions in Germany in general, and of the practices of German justices in particular, made him a strong opponent of the right wing and populist parties long before the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. Immediately after takeover, Joseph Bornstein left Germany and settled in France where he worked for various German exile newspapers. After the war broke out, he left France and managed to emigrate to the United States where he worked for the Office of War Information. After the Second World War he became a literary agent and writer of non-fiction books. The material in the Joseph Bornstein collection contains material from the post-war period of his life until his death in 1952. It consists of manuscripts, research notes, and professional and personal correspondence. An important part of this collection is material related to Joseph Roth that contains some of his notes, his poems, and correspondence with some of his friends and publishing houses.

Joseph Roth was one of the most prominent Austrian writers of the first half of the 20th century. Particularly his novels and newspaper essays gained him the respect of contemporary critics. Joseph Roth's papers at the Leo Baeck Institute Archives consist of handwritten and typewritten manuscripts of novels, novellas, short stories, and essays, including mostly complete manuscripts of his works Die Hundert Tage (The Ballad of the Hundred Days), Büste des Kaisers (The Bust of the Emperor), and his 'Trozki' novel Der stumme Prophet (The Silent Prophet). Joseph Roth's journalistic work is also well represented. There are a few personal items and over one hundred photographs of Joseph Roth and his wife Friederike. The Joseph Roth collection also contains correspondence with family and publishers, clippings about Joseph Roth, and reviews of his work. The addenda mostly consist of invitations to conferences and exhibitions, and scholarly articles on Joseph Roth's work and life.

The Lev Aizenberg Collection documents Lev Aizenberg’s professional activities as a lawyer in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Collected here are materials pertaining to a large number of cases involving Jews of Kursk and Kursk Guberniya (Province) and their attempts to fight eviction orders and subsequent relocation back to the Pale of Settlement

The collection contains a family member-written biographical and narrative genealogy of the Loewentheil and Brevda families entitled, An American Dream: The Story of the Loewentheils and the Brevdas in America, documenting the family slightly before their arrival in America prior to 1906 to approximately to 2003. The text is 125 pages long and includes family historical narrative and color photograph pages. The author is Stephen Loewentheil. Photograph pages include family members, death certificates, transcripts, correspondence, and ephemera. The narrative weaves the Loewentheil's and Brevda's family history from the viewpoint of an immigrant family in America.

Collection contains a typescript of memoirs (some sections in several drafts) covering the period until 1907, describing Lisan's youth in Russia, his journey to America, his early years in Philadelphia, and his travels throughout Pennsylvania. The memoirs also relate in some detail Lisan's Zionist activities in Russia and America, and his reaction to world Jewish events.

Materials include: correspondence covering the years 1902-1969 dealing with Lisan's Zionist activities, announcements (1909-1910) of the Maccabean Zionist Society in Philadelphia, receipts and a Land Certificate from the American Zion Commonwealth, and a share certificate from the Jewish Colonial Trust.

Mizrakh Yidisher Historisher Arkhiv Collection consists of diverse materials that pertain to pogroms in the period between 1918 and 1921 that took place mostly in Ukraine but also in Belarus, Poland, and Russia. There is a wide variety of topics that are covered in the collection including Ukrainian-Jewish relations during a short lived Ukrainian Republic, Ukrainian-Jewish political, communal, and governmental organizations, Ukrainian government and the role of politicians and military Commanders in pogroms, most notably Symon Petlyura and Ataman Grigoriev, pogroms and its aftermath, military occupation of Ukraine by the German, Polish, Bolshevik and General Denikin’s armies and its relationship to pogroms, Jewish self-defense and relief work. Also included here are materials pertaining to the trial of Sholom Schwarzbard who was tried in France for assassination of Symon Petlyura. The collection consists of of large amount of lists and eyewitness testimonies, correspondence, complaints and petitions, reports and resolutions, statements and proclamations, memoranda and circular letters, conference materials, statues and by-laws, clippings and bulletins, military orders, and photographs.

Papers of Murray Levine, a rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom in Framingham, MA, worked extensively to help resettle Jewish immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union and traveled to the Soviet Union to deliver spiritual and material support to Soviet Jewish Refuseniks. The materials include photographs and slides, trip reports, notes, memos, clippings, Refusenik profiles, a notebook with coded names of Soviet Jews, and correspondence, including a letter of support from Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Abraham Charasch Collection documents Abraham Charasch’s involvement with various Jewish political parties and Jewish student organizations in the Russian Empire and abroad prior to the October Revolution of 1917. Most materials collected here deal with the Union of Eastern Jewish Student Organizations in Western Europe and Zionist Socialist Worker’s Party. Included here is correspondence, by-laws, reports, resolutions, minutes of meetings, declarations, circular letters, lists of delegates to student conferences, memoranda, manuscripts, bibliographies, and applications sent to the Swiss Central Committee for the Return of Political Immigrants.