Mikveh

This collection contains the archives of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, a national coordinating agency which assists national and regional Jewish agencies in the U.S. and Canada in fund raising, community organization, health and welfare planning, public relations, and similar missions.

Collection includes materials of the predecessor agency (Bureau of Jewish Social Research), correspondence, research, budget reports, audits, and reports on the activities of approximately 600 national, local, and overseas Jewish agencies.

The Leo Breslauer Collection documents the professional career of Rabbi Leo Breslauer, and to a smaller extent, his personal life, especially in relation to his and his family’s departure from Germany. Prominent topics include his rabbinical work at congregations in Fürth, Germany and in New York City, his writings, and his thoughts on Zionism.

The collection comprises a portion of the records of the Jewish community of Wąbrzeźno, known in German as Briesen. The records date from 1871 to 1921, concentrated in the era when the town of Briesen was part of the province of West Prussia, in the German Empire; only a handful of items date from the years 1920-1921, when the town was part of Poland. The collection comprises administrative and financial records kept by the Briesen Jewish Community Council, except for one volume of records kept by the Jüdischer Lese-Verein (Jewish Reading Society) of Briesen, in the years 1901 to 1908. Approximately 40% of the collection comprises financial records, 1882-1921, including official budgets and tax lists; 20% concerns the community's religious institutions; and another 20% comprises records related to community employees, especially rabbis and cantors. The remainder of the collection includes correspondence, communal meeting minutes and decisions, circulars announcing meetings, and a variety of administrative records. Included are records pertaining to communal council elections; synagogue seat rentals; burials and the care of graves; the construction and maintenance of the mikveh (ritual bath house); the expansion of the cemetery; synagogue rules and the renovation of the synagogue; charitable activities, often in cooperation with regional and national Jewish organizations; and the religious school and Jewish elementary school.

The collection comprises a portion of the records of the Jewish community of Ostrów Wielkopolski, today in west-central Poland, in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. The region was annexed by Prussia in 1793, in the Second Partition of Poland; in German the town was known as Ostrowo. The records date mainly from 1834 to 1919, with a few materials from as early as 1822. During this period the town was part of the Posen (Poznań) region of Prussia and, after 1871, of the German Empire; in 1919, it was incorporated into the Second Republic of Poland. The community numbered nearly 2,000 members in the late 19th century and declined steadily thereafter due to migration of members to larger German cities or overseas; only a small Jewish community remained during the interwar period. The records are mainly those of the Jewish communal administration, or council; a small amount of material pertains to several community voluntary organizations. Included are financial records such as budgets, balance sheets, and tax lists; communal minutes and decisions throughout the period; correspondence with the government, and, to a lesser extent, with Jewish organizations and other Jewish communities; records pertaining to community members' naturalizations, marriages, births, and synagogue seat contracts; petitions from individual community members, especially pertaining to charitable aid in the mid to late 19th century; records pertaining to communal educational and religious institutions; records on the hiring and employment of community rabbis,cantors, and other personnel, including application materials from candidates not hired; property records and mortgages; documentation of construction and renovation of communal buildings; records related to court cases, bequests, and estate and guardianship matters; and ephemera such as meeting notices and announcement fliers, as well as scattered clippings.

This volume, which belonged to Shmuel Robles de Medina, hazzan of Congregation Neve Shalom, contains the following: a Hebrew poem with the first letters forming the acrostic, "Shmuel Robles de Medina"; formulas for ketubot, divorce, power of attorney, certification of ritual slaughter, removal of a required levirate marriage (halizah) in Portuguese and Hebrew; specifications for a mikveh with the mention that land for the mikveh was purchased by Rabbi Olivera. Of interest is a document for halizah which was received from Amsterdam. The document includes the names of the parties involved as well as the names of the witnesses, including David Cohen d'Azevedo (d. 1792). The last few pages contain copies of documents which have been copied out in Dutch.

This collection documents the history of the Jewish community of Burgsinn (Bavaria, Germany) and the Stein, Hamburger, and Heinemann families that played an active role in this community. Materials include official letters and contracts concerning the Burgsinn Jewish community; registries of births, marriages, deaths, and property owners; the records of the Burgsinn Soldiers’ Club; reports on visits of New World Club members to their former German cities in 1994; personal family papers of the Stein, Heinemann, and Hamburger families; and a few photographs.