Women's rights

This record group contains materials related to the local units of Hadassah—groups, chapters, regions, and co-ops—as well as Junior Hadassah, a youth organization that functioned as a group within the Hadassah Chapter structure. The record group documents over one hundred years of Hadassah’s growth, and illuminates a century of American Jewish communal life, particularly that of Jewish women, across the United States. The record group reflects the formation, administration and activities of the individual groups, chapters, co-ops and regions, and contains information on local events and programs organized around fundraising, Zionism, Jewish heritage, religion and holidays celebration, the study of Hebrew and Yiddish, women's issues, fashion, health, technology and many other topics.

This record group includes documents created and maintained by the Office of the President, the Office of the Executive Director and the Chair of the Division Coordinators/Directors Committee. Prominent is the Henrietta Szold series, containing correspondence by and to Szold as well as printed materials written by and about her. The files in this record group were created by a national president or executive director, or for their use, or maintained in their office during their years in office. Included are correspondence, minutes, memos, publications, reports and subject files on topics with which these individuals were involved.

The materials in this record group document the entirety of Hadassah’s history and work in Israel and the United States in photographs—prints, slides, glass lantern plates, and digital images.

The records of the American Jewish Congress, a national Jewish agency, concerned primarily with Jewish and other minority civil rights, include the constitution, by-laws, and minutes of the Administrative and Executive Committees and Governing Council of the Congress. The collection has materials generated by the National Biennial Conventions, Executive Directors, including Phil Baum and Henry Siegman, and the General Counsel files of Will Maslow, Commissions and the Jerusalem Conferences of Mayors, Regional Chapters, National Women's Division, Business and Professional Chapters, Public Relations, and miscellaneous activities conducted by American Jewish Congress.

Shirley T. Joseph was a feminist Jewish activist involved in a number of advocacy groups and community organizations working locally (in Buffalo, New York), nationally, and internationally. She attended three of the United Nations’ World Conferences on Women (in 1980, 1985, and 1995), and the bulk of the collection documents these events in the records of various planning committees, personal correspondence, official UN documentation, collections of news clippings, and Joseph’s own notes, speeches, and articles.