Jewish college students

This collection consists of buttons, a keychain, and a sticker advocating support for Holocaust survivors, human rights issues, Israel, and Soviet Jews. Organizations represented include Boston Mobilization for Soviet Jewry, Coalition to Free Soviet Jews, Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Jewish Students Network, National Conference on Soviet Jewry, Student Zionist Council, and Young Judaea.

Lights in Action (LIA) was a network of students dedicated to inspiring Jewish pride and unity among college students. LIA student activists designed, created, and distributed Jewish/Zionist literature that reached approximately 100,000 students on over 120 campuses. In addition, LIA designed and coordinated national student projects like Shabbat Leumit, a guide to lead students across North America through the rituals during Shabbat. LIA also hosted and sponsored national conferences, summer programs in Israel, leadership training, and seminars on a variety of topics of interest to Jewish students. The records include Lights in Action publications and printed matter, administrative records, photographs and slides, audiovisual material, sound recordings, and born digital material.

Ruth Sapin Hurwitz was a social worker, teacher, writer, lecturer and proponent of Jewish Cultural heritage and ideas. The Ruth Sapin Hurwitz Photograph Album contains black and white photographs taken by Hurwitz during her time as a student at Wellesley College (1906-1910). The album includes undated handwritten captions and provides a look into women’s college life during the early part of the 20th century. Images capture campus activities such as studying, theatre performances, and social events. Also included are images from Hurwitz trips to Europe and across the United States.

Founded in 1970 as a constituent organization of the North American Jewish Students’ Appeal, the Jewish Student Press Service (JSPS) served as a provider of student-written feature articles and news distributor for the Jewish student and young adult publishers in North America and Israel. This collection documents the activities of the JSPS from its founding to 1987 and includes correspondence, meeting minutes, flyers, and unpublished articles. The majority of the collection is made up of mailing packets, later known as Jewish Press Features.

The records of the North American Jewish Students Appeal (NAJSA or APPEAL) contains documents on two levels of concern: those documents dealing with the NAJSA as a student-run organization promoting Jewish identity among college-aged youth; and those documents dealing with the APPEAL as a fundraising organization for several well-known student constituent organizations. The Constituents were: the Jewish Student Press Service, Lights in Action, the North American Jewish Students Network, the Progressive Zionist Caucus, Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review, Yavneh Religious Students Organization, and Yugntruf Youth for Yiddish. Documents include correspondence, financial records, minutes, press releases, information on grants awarded to student organizations for programming and publishing, student journals and newspapers, photographs, and ephemera.

The Papers of Riv-Ellen Prell contain research, fieldwork, and correspondence she conducted to fulfill her graduate work in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Prell later expanded on this work with further research and wrote a book on the Havurah Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The papers primarily encompass the field notes and interviews she engaged in while observing the Westwood Free Minyan in Los Angeles.