16th Street

Purim Association financial record of money raised in charity...

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:39:57 -0400

Purim Association financial record of money raised in charity balls. 1901. From the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society.

This image is featured in Contributors to the Cause, a traveling exhibition about the history of Jewish philanthropy in the United States presented by the Center for Jewish History and made possible by The David Berg Foundation.

List of donors to the Association for Free Distribution of...

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:37:02 -0400

List of donors to the Association for Free Distribution of Matsot to the Poor. 1850s. From the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Letter from General John Tyler to Bernard Judah, remembering...

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:33:00 -0400

Letter from General John Tyler to Bernard Judah, remembering Samual Judah’s generous support in the struggle for independence. 1824. From the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Wonderful research project (using archives housed at the Center for Jewish History) turned into film.

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:38:00 -0400

Wonderful research project (using archives housed at the Center for Jewish History) turned into film.:

Aspirin. Nobel Prizes. Flintstones vitamins. Slavery. War crimes. Mass murder. A brilliant company that made a killing. Literally.

Click on the above link to learn more about A Deal with the Devil—How I.G. Farben Turned Good Into Evil.

Second-Hand Book Sale: Unfortunately, this event has been...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:22:00 -0400

Second-Hand Book Sale:

Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled.

We apologize for any inconvenience and will reschedule at a later time.

Above image: Lüthy Emil. “Dr. Max Rieser”, 1924, linocut. Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

Shavuot papercut, possibly from Eastern Europe, early 20th...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:53:50 -0400

Shavuot papercut, possibly from Eastern Europe, early 20th Century. Yeshiva University Museum.

For more, visit the Center for Jewish History’s Flickr photostream.
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Ketubbah (marriage contract) from Persia, 1840s. Yeshiva...

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:23:06 -0400

Ketubbah (marriage contract) from Persia, 1840s. Yeshiva University Museum.

For more, visit the Center for Jewish History’s Flickr photostream.
Click here to connect with the Center for Jewish History on Facebook.

Postcard, Atlantic City. Circa 1940. Yeshiva University...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:01:00 -0400

Postcard, Atlantic City. Circa 1940. Yeshiva University Museum.

Reverse: The Breakers on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City, New Jersey: The Largest Kosher Hotel in the United States. Postmarked from Atlantic City, N.J. August 13, 1940 and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. David Turner, Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

For more, visit the Center for Jewish History’s Flickr photostream.
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Join the 16th Street book club!

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:05:00 -0400

All book club sessions are free and open to the public. Please try to bring your books or e-reading devices with you. RSVPs recommended: mhaier@cjh.org.

Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY

Upcoming meeting:

— Wednesday, May 29 at 7pm
to discuss Lola, California by Edie Meidav

The year is 2008; the place, California. Vic Mahler, famous for having inspired cult followers in the seventies, serves time on death row, awaiting his execution in ten days. For years, his daughter, Lana, has been in hiding, but her friend Rose, a lawyer, is determined to bring the two together. Yet when Rose succeeds in tracking down Lana at a California health spa, the pair must negotiate land mines of memory in order to reconcile the past and face their futures. A story infused with pathos and wit, insight and lyricism,Lola, California “matches metaphoric wit with an American state that defies summary…A hypnotic and suspenseful tale, tightening toward an irresistible end” (Elizabeth Rosner, author of The Speed of Light).

To see a list of what we’ve already read, click here.

Out of the ArchivesYiddish Artists Relax in the Catskills, circa...

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:24:00 -0400

Out of the Archives
Yiddish Artists Relax in the Catskills, circa 1938
by Rachel Harrison, Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History

The Adler Family Papers (P-890) at the American Jewish Historical Society contain a wealth of photos of figures from the heyday of the American Yiddish theater, from the 1880s and running to the 1970s. These include Jacob P. Adler, the patriarch of the Yiddish acting dynasty, his second wife Dinah Shtettin, and their daughter Celia, his third wife, Sara, and several of their children, as well as various spouses, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, and in-laws, many of whom were involved in Yiddish theater. There are also myriad photos of groups of family members and friends, as well as numerous pictures of actors in costumes from various productions.

In the above photo, Yiddish actors, singers, playwrights, poets, and theater owners relax at a bungalow colony in the Catskill Mountains in the late 1930s. Among them are Shmuel Niger, David and Adele Pinski, Jacob Ben-Ami, Peretz, Esther Shumiatcher and Omus Hirschbein, and Lazar Freed, who was the first husband of Celia Adler. For more information about the Adler family and their impact on Yiddish theater, including numerous wonderful photos, please see the Guide to the Adler Family Papers.

AJHS Senior Archivist Wins Award

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:01:24 -0400

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) has awarded Tanya Elder second prize for best Finding Aid of 2012. Ms. Elder is a Senior Archivist at the American Jewish Historical Society here at the Center. She wrote the finding aid for the Mordecai Sheftall Papers. It is over 100 pages long and contains embedded links to every Continental Army provision return within the collection. This collection was processed, microfilmed and digitized with partial funding from the “Save America’s Treasures” federal grant program. Ms. Tanya Elder received her award at the Regional MARAC meeting at the end of April.

Click here to view the finding aid!

Out of the ArchivesForesightSubmitted by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:01:11 -0400

Out of the Archives
Foresight
Submitted by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History

From the Leo Baeck Institute’s Helen Ollendorff Curth Collection ([AR 25004]).

Excerpt from the above June 1933 letter:

“I doubt whether I can really give you authentic information on the German-Jewish doctor question. I happen to know, because I have a married sister in Cork, that the Irish Free State is willing to allow them to re-study and take the exams there provided they can certify the possession of at least…(say about $2,500). On the other hand, Germany has backed water regarding the Upper Silesia question and maybe, as a result of the Bernheim petition at the League of Nations, Jewish doctors thrown out may be compelled to be reinstated once more. Though my personal opinion is, that the Jewish people are finished for all time as regards a future in Germany.”

Click the letter to enlarge the image and continue reading.
Or you can start your own search of the collections by clicking here.

LBI Archivist in the New York Times

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:21:00 -0400

LBI Archivist in the New York Times:

Caring for Albert Einstein’s childhood teacup or Meyer Lansky’s marriage certificate, archivists in New York are assuming a higher profile and doing more networking.

This NYT article features archivist Michael Simonson of the Leo Baeck Institute, one of the 5 partners here at the Center for Jewish History.

Our new microfilm readers await you!by Zachary Loeb, MSIS,...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:09:00 -0400

Our new microfilm readers await you!
by Zachary Loeb, MSIS, Patron Services Librarian, Center for Jewish History

If you love microfilm (and Jewish history), then the Center for Jewish History is the place for you! Between the collections of the five partners at the Center for Jewish History and the items on extended loan in the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, the Center has thousands of reels of microfilm, featuring everything from archival collections to newspapers to genealogical records. The Center is proud to announce that patrons using microfilm will now be able to use brand new ScanPro 2000 digital microfilm readers!

The ScanPro 2000 provides patrons with easy-to-use microfilm readers that offer a host of new functions and present crisp and clean images on 24-inch computer screens. With the simple click of a button, the ScanPro 2000 enables patrons to straighten images, zoom in and out, adjust brightness and contrast, and crop images.

As with the previous microfilm readers available at the Center, the ScanPro 2000s enable patrons to make printouts; however, unlike the previous microfilm readers, the ScanPro 2000s also allow patrons to easily save their images in the JPG, PDF, and other image formats, so that they may be e-mailed or saved to a “jump drive.”

In addition, the ScanPro 2000 allows for saved images to be easily converted into a Word-searchable format, which makes finding the relevant information much easier (though this function works best with microfilm in English). And with its simple “Film Selection Wizard” (to say nothing of the knowledgeable staff at CJH), the ScanPro 2000 makes it easy for microfilm users to get to work, regardless of how much experience they previously have working with microfilm.

The Center for Jewish History is proud to offer eight ScanPro 2000s for patron use. If you are planning a visit to the Lillian Goldman Reading Room or the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute and you anticipate using microfilm, we recommend that you reserve a machine. Please be aware that all microfilm use is subject to copyright and fair use restrictions. To make a microfilm reader reservation, please call (917) 606-8217.

Telling Untold Stories: Sephardic Jews & the Holocaust

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:33:13 -0400

Professor Devin Naar was recently named to the Center for Jewish History’s Academic Advisory Council. This interview with him was originally published on StroumJewishStudies.org, the website for the Stroum Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington, and is reposted here with permission.

——————

Telling Untold Stories: Sephardic Jews & the Holocaust

Prof. Devin Naar, whose interest in Sephardic Holocaust history led him on a world-wide search for untold stories.

Editor’s Note: On April 28-30, the University of Washington will host an unprecedented conference exploring the experiences of Sephardic Jews during the Holocaust. Click here to find out more about “Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust: The Future of the Field.” Prof. Devin Naar, of the Stroum Jewish Studies Program and the Department of History, has been the symposium’s lead organizer in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

We recently caught up with Prof. Naar, who shared some of the fascinating backstory behind this month’s symposium, which is the culmination of nearly a decade of research–and, he hopes, the beginning of a new conversation.

1) How did you get involved in planning a symposium with the USHMM? Had you partnered with the museum before, or conducted research there?

For the last eight years, I have been working together on and off (and in four countries) with theUSHMM to reconstitute the pre-World War II archives of the Jewish communities of Greece. One might say this is part of the pre-history of the symposium here at the UW. To begin the story, we have to go back to the Second World War. It was at that time that the Nazis confiscated the archives and libraries of Jewish communities in Greece–as in most of occupied Europe. The records of Greece’s largest and most famed Jewish community, Salonica, were thus believed to have been destroyed.

It turns out, however, that at the conclusion of the war, the Soviet military captured some of these archives, brought them to Moscow, and locked them up in a secret archive along with other war spoils. Only when the Soviet Union collapsed did the existence of these records become known. While Russia has refused to return the archives to Greece, the USHMM successfully acquired a set of microfilms of this material and has made it available to scholars for the first time. I have therefore made many trips to Washington, D. C., but only one to Moscow.

What Moscow (and subsequently the USHMM) had, however, turned out to be only part of the pre-war archive of the Jewish community of Salonica. This realization led me on a hunt through the United States, Greece and Israel in search of the other parts of the archives. Other fragments, via circuitous routes, found their way to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. In cooperation with the USHMM, and especially its International Archive Program, I spent extended time in New York and Jerusalem organizing and cataloging the rich materials at each locale. For the most part, these documents, written primarily in Judeo-Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, and French, had remained largely untouched–and in disarray–for the last sixty years or more. I cataloged both collections and helped arrange for each to be microfilmed and digitized.

As a Fulbright scholar, Devin Naar delivered the introductory remarks, in Greek, to an exhibition he curated at the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki in 2006. The President of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, David Saltiel, stands to the right.

As a Fulbright scholar in Salonica, via another unanticipated twist, I located yet one more piece of the pre-war (and wartime) archive in a basement of one of the Jewish community’s properties and helped transfer it to the local Jewish Museum. I similarly cataloged this material, prepared it for microfilming and digitization, and curated an exhibition at the Museum based on the preliminary findings. All of the material I helped uncover and describe served as one of the major, previously untapped sources for my dissertation at Stanford University and the current book manuscript I am working on.

It was precisely when I was writing my dissertation that the direct seed for the present symposium at the UW was planted. In 2010, my then-dissertation advisor, Aron Rodrigue [editor’s note: Prof. Rodrigue is giving the Keynote Address on April 28th], co-led a summer research workshop at the USHMM focused on Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust. I had the privilege of attending. At the workshop—the first of its kind—scholars from across the country gathered to discuss the state of scholarship about Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust; the amount of scholarship was not particularly overwhelming. Part of the workshop involved time to conduct research utilizing the USHMM’s extensive library and archival holdings in the hope of further expanding the field.

When I began my position at the UW, Leah Wolfson, a program officer for the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the USHMM who had organized the workshop in 2010, contacted me in the hopes that we could put together a follow-up symposium that would provide a venue for some of the participants in the first workshop to present their latest research and also to invite some new scholars to the table. Given my interest in Sephardic Studies and also the dynamic Sephardic community here in Seattle, which counts a number of Holocaust survivors from Salonica and Rhodes, it seemed like a perfect match. We decided to convene the symposium in the spring of 2013, in part, to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the start of the deportations of the Jews of Salonica to Auschwitz in the spring of 1943.

2) What are some common assumptions about the history of Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust, and how do you think the symposium will counter those assumptions?

I think the first common assumption about the relationship between Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust is that there isn’t any. The Holocaust has generally been studied and remembered as a primarily Ashkenazi phenomenon. The history of Sephardic Jews, an extremely diverse set of populations, is not well known in scholarly or public contexts (both Jewish and non-Jewish) in the United States. The experiences of Sephardic Jews during the Holocaust are even less known, less discussed and less studied. Courses at the University level about the Holocaust tend not to mention Jews from Greece and the Balkans let alone North Africa. The USHMM and Yad Vashem introduced exhibits about places like Salonica only relatively recently and after much effort to do so. Not until 2003 was a commemorative plaque in Judeo-Spanish added to those already extant since the 1960s in twenty other languages spoken by the victims of Auschwitz as part of the camp’s memorial.

The Guerchon family in the Salonica ghetto, 1943. All perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki)

My hope, on one level, is that the symposium will increase scholarly and public awareness about the fact that certain communities of Sephardic Jews also experienced the Holocaust. In addition, I hope that the symposium will provoke some questions: Do Sephardic narratives somehow help us understand the Holocaust better? Or differently? I also hope that the more than a dozen scholars from across the country who will be here to share their work will give and receive valuable input to one another, and begin to form a community of scholars interested in the nascent field of Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust.

Finally, I hope that the symposium will serve as yet another link between the UW and the broader community—and it is precisely in view of promoting this connection that the History Department’s Hanauer Outreach Fund is serving as a co-sponsor. Seattle is unlike other cities in this country due to the particularly robust mark that Sephardic Jews have left on the city. This symposium, and the Sephardic Studies Initiative of the Stroum Jewish Studies Program more generally, seeks to pay tribute to Seattle’s Sephardic Jews and to remember and reflect upon some of the places and communities from which they or their families came.

3) You have a very personal stake in this academic discussion: as you discussed in a talk last fall, it was your curiosity about your own family’s Holocaust history that led you to study Ladino. Now, the video of that talk has over 1200 views on YouTube (click here to view). How has it felt to have that personal history become so public?

I first told the story of my relatives from Greece during the Holocaust, how I discovered their fate, and how the whole experience led me to learn Ladino and embark upon my current career path, at the invitation of some cousins a few years ago. They wanted a different perspective for the annual Holocaust commemoration program at their synagogue and asked if I would speak about our family, and the story of Salonican and Greek Jewry, more generally. So I went back to my native state of New Jersey. My parents were in attendance, as were other relatives and friends, and many people I did not know (I had never been to that particular synagogue before). It was an extremely powerful experience for me. At a certain point, I actually broke down and started to cry. I had never spoken publicly from such a personal perspective before; I had never revealed something so intense and so painful.

Prof. Naar presented his short lecture, “In Search of Uncle Salomon,” as part of the JewDub Talks program featuring four faculty members in November 2012.

I patterned my JewDub Talk, “In Search of Uncle Salomon,” on that presentation in New Jersey. The more I tell the story publically, the easier it gets. Sort of. The talk is, in some ways, an attempt to bridge the gap between the public and the private, the familiar and the foreign, the distant and the intimate, the safety of a world here in the twenty-first century United States and the seemingly distant and devastating world of the Eastern Mediterranean of the mid-twentieth century. The moments in which I remove the distance, I let down my “objective,” scholarly guard, and in which I remind myself—and inform the audience—that these people I am speaking about are not just any people, but they are my people, my family, my great aunt and uncle, my cousins, whom I never met—that turned out to be difficult to do and to say, especially in public.

I am glad that many people are viewing the video. I only wish there were others like it. Telling the story of my family served as a vehicle to discuss the community of Salonica, and Greece, and Sephardic Jewry more generally—to have a few words of Judeo-Spanish out on the internet. I did not have an unrelenting desire to tell this often overlooked story. I initially did so because I was asked to do it, and I realized that it was a story that not many others were telling. I have, at times, felt confronted with the following question: if I do not tell the story of this community, who will?

I hope that the participants in our symposium will help answer this question.

Out of the ArchivesPrioritiesby Kevin Schlottmann, Levy...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:03:23 -0400

Out of the Archives
Priorities
by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History

The first image above is a letter of reference written for Ernst Fleischmann upon his leaving the position of head chemist for BMW’s airplane engine division. He left voluntarily for the United States in 1935 as conditions for Jews in Germany were worsening. The second image is the United States patent for Fleischmann’s invention upon arriving in the United States, a jacketed bullet with improved accuracy.

Both items are from the Leo Baeck Institute’s Fleischmann Family Collection ([AR 25349]).

Click here to start your own search of the collections.

National Poetry MonthOn a Poem by Leyb Kvitkoby J.D. Arden,...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:53:00 -0400

National Poetry Month
On a Poem by Leyb Kvitko
by J.D. Arden, M.L.I.S. candidate, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History

Inscrutable Cat
by Leyb Kvitko (c.1890-1952),
translated from Yiddish by A. Mandelbaum & H. Rabinowitz

This poem is taken from The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, published in 1987, and is one of many such books available in the Lillian Goldman Reading Room at the Center for Jewish History.

Inscrutable cat!

I am as still, as still as you,
Although you tread with shadow-steps -
The peace of distant worlds within your gaze
So softly in the shadows of my rage…

I am as still, as still as you…
Along my meager island shore -
The island of my memory - where ruins flicker faintly through
Awareness with its waves, its fog,
On that pathetic island
At times there creeps an ancient frog.
Lazily he looks about, lazily he croaks -
At all that was, the old, the shriveled heretofore.
Then lazily he turns around; he croaks another croak -
At the insane, the stolen here and now.
In me the present and the past are soon to speak no more.
Only the croaking will be etched into my island shore.
I start to sink into a shapeless torpor
And -
I am as still, as still as you…

Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19, 1943)On its...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:22:52 -0400

Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19, 1943)
On its Seventieth Anniversary
by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Reference Services Research Coordinator, Center for Jewish History

In April of 1943, news of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising reached the Vilna Ghetto, and Hirsh Glick wrote the song “Zog Nit Keyn Mol”(“Never Say”). It soon spread not only throughout the Vilna Ghetto, but also to other ghettos and concentration camps. Sung to a marching tempo, the song begins:

Never say you’ve come to the end of the way,
Though leaden skies blot out the light of the day.
The hour we all long for will surely appear,—
Our steps will thunder with the words, “We are here!”

This translation is from Yes We Sang! Songs of the Ghettos and Concentration Camps, which is available here in the reference collection of the Lillian Goldman Reading Room.

The uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during the Shoah (source), and it started on April 19th. I was intrigued by the question of how news of it reached the Vilna Ghetto and the American people, so I decided to do some research. I recently read an article on the documentary Reporting on the Times, which is premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival (see “‘Reporting on the Times’ Calls Out New York Times Holocaust Coverage”), so I searched the New York Times using database access provided in the Reading Room.

On April 23, 1943, the Times published a skimpy, four-paragraph article that states “…the ghetto populace is resisting deportation of the city’s remaining 35,000 Jews.” It states that the resistance was “costing the Germans many lives.” Despite the fact that it speaks about the Jews in terms of “liquidating the ghetto” and “deportations” in the credit of the paper, the final paragraph of the article says that “Polish circles here believe 1,300,000 Polish Jews already have perished under the German occupation.”

According to the article about the documentary Reporting on the Times, the “film points to a story published in the paper July 29, 1942, about the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The story bore the headline ‘Warsaw Fears Extermination,’ was published on Page 7, and was not even a stand-alone story, instead consisting of a handful of paragraphs nestled next to an ad for Emerson spinet pianos.”

A U.P. article from May 7, 1943 is more forthcoming. It reads: “The Jews, fighting against annihilation by the Nazis were reported using bedsteads as bunkers and fighting with arms smuggled into the ghetto.”

The next article I found was from May 15th. In it, Rabbi Irving Miller—acting as secretary general of the World Jewish Congress—reports that “All Jews in Warsaw’s ghetto have been ‘liquidated’ according to Poles’ reports…”

The World Jewish Congress did publish a monograph titled “Lest we forget; the massacre of the Warsaw ghetto. A compilation of reports received by the World Jewish Congress and by the Representation of Polish Jewry.” To my surprise, this was published in August of 1943. Page 38 reads in part:

The manner of the German attack showed that they expected armed resistance. The struggle began and the Germans suffered relatively large losses. There was talk of several killed, a large number of wounded, and the loss of ammunition and military equipment…The first German attack was repulsed within a few hours…The Germans therefore changed their tactics…burned block after block of houses in the outer streets of the ghetto…The German attack was very cowardly…

Daring to resist : Jewish defiance in the Holocaust has a touching letter from Mordechai Anielewicz, a 23-year-old commander to Yitzhak Zuckerman. Zuckerman would escape the ghetto through the sewers and helped to secure arms. In the letter, Anielewicz pleads with Yitzhak:

We are now switching to guerrilla warfare… We know the pistol has no real value and we rarely use it. We need grenades, rifles, machine guns and explosives.

Zuckerman became a founder of the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz in Israel, where he died in 1981.

The collections here at the Center hold additional resources about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, including:

Shielding the flame; an intimate conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising
Notes from the Warsaw ghetto; the journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum
and countless memoirs, archives and other books that document the devastation of European Jewry during the Shoah. (See Holocaust Resources: An Annotated bibliography of archival holdings at the Center for Jewish History.)

Every time I come across a Judenstern “Jewish Badge” like these (held by the LBI archives), I am shaken. However, I find solace in the fact that this material is being preserved for the education of future generations, and when I remember the heroes and martyrs of the Jewish resistance, who sang the concluding verse of “Zog Nit Keyn Mol”:

In blood this song was written, and not with pen or quill,
Not from a songbird freely flying as he will.
Sung by a people crushed by falling walls—
Sung with guns in hand, by those whom freedom calls.

National Poetry MonthOn a Poem by Yehudah Amichaiby J.D. Arden,...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:44:55 -0400

National Poetry Month
On a Poem by Yehudah Amichai
by J.D. Arden, M.L.I.S. candidate, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History

The poem “First Resurrection” (תחייה ראשונה) is from the poem cycle “Four Resurrections in the Valley of the Ghosts” by Yehudah Amichai (יהודה עמיחי 1924-2000), read in Hebrew above by writer Leon Wieseltier as part of the “CultureBuzz” Amichai poetry series on YouTube.

The English translation below is from the book Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994.

More books by Yehuda Amichai and Leon Wieseltier are available to discover at the Center for Jewish History. You can search the collections by clicking here.

First Resurrection

A woman who looks like my mother sees a man who looks like me,
They pass each other without turning around.

Mistakes are marvelous and simple as life and death,
As the arithmetic book of a small child.

In the shelter for wayward girls, girls singing on the balcony
Hang their clothes out to dry, banners of love.

In the fiber institute they make ropes of fiber
To bind souls in the bundle of life.

An afternoon wind blows, as if asking:
What did you do, what did you talk about.

In old stone houses young women do in the day
What mothers of their mothers dreamed of doing at night.

The Armenian church is empty and closed
Like an abandoned wife whose husband went far off and disappeared.

Wayward girls sing, “God will bring the dead to life
In His great mercy” and fold their dried clothes.
“Blessed forever be His name.”

Women in HistoryNobel Prize Winnersby David P. Rosenberg,...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:47:00 -0400

Women in History
Nobel Prize Winners
by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Reference Services Research Coordinator, Center for Jewish History

I recently researched women with Jewish roots who have won the Nobel Prize. Seven people hold the distinction in a range of topics from medicine to chemistry to literature:

Gerty Cori was the third woman, and the first American woman, to win the prize when she won for her work in physiology in 1947.

She has an entry Biographia Judaica Bohemiae, which is available in our reference collection.

Rita Levi-Montalcini also won the prize for physiology or medicine; she was awarded the prize in 1986.

The AJHS library here at the Center holds In praise of imperfection: my life and work by Rita Levi-Montalcini.

The YIVO library here at the Center has a book by Gian Paolo Brizzi: Bologna 1938: silence and remembering : the racial laws and the foreign Jewish students at the University of Bologna.

Levi-Montalcini, an Italian, also had her career drastically affected by Mussolini’s racial laws. She wrote the preface for Brizzi’s work.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was also awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. She was awarded the prize in 1977. She studied and taught at Mount Sinai Hospital. (AJHS also holds a collection on Mount Sinai Hospital that has a box list online.)

The YIVO library holds the biography Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel laureate: her life and work in medicine: a biographical memoir.

Ada Yonath is the first Israeli woman to win the prize; she won for her work in chemistry in 2009. She has an article in Encyclopaedia Judaica. We have a print copy of this invaluable resource in the reference collection in addition to access to the online version.

Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian novelist, playwright and activist won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2004. She was raised by her Catholic mother and Jewish father. Her work was surely affected by her Roman Catholic preliminary education, the Vienna Conservatory where she earned a degree in organ, and her further studies at the University of Vienna.

If you search the catalog, search.cjh.org, there are eight works in the collection that speak about Jelinek’s work or have contributions by her, including Sexualisierte Gewalt : weibliche Erfahrungen in NS-Konzentrationslagern / Helga Amesberger, Katrin Auer, Brigitte Halbmayr; mit einem Essay von Elfriede Jelinek [ Sexual violence: female experiences in Nazi concentration camps / Helga Amesberger, Katrin Auer, Brigitte Halbmayr, with an essay by Elfriede Jelinek], which is particularly relevant considering her well-known work The Piano Teacher.

Also available is “Ich will kein Theater”: mediale Ueberschreitungen [“I want no drama” About media shortfalls], which is particularly relevant considering her role in the release of Jack Unterweger.

Nadine Gordimer, South African author and political activist, won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1991. Multiple books she penned were banned during Apartheid.

Noted photojournalist for Newsweek magazine Bernard Gotfryd has a collection at the YIVO archives, RG 1380, that includes a photograph of Nadine Gordimer.

The LBI library here at the Center also holds a work with contributions by Gordimer: Wege im harten Gras: Erinnerungen an Deutschland, Suedafrika und England [Way in the tough grass: Memories of Germany, South Africa and England].

Within this distinguished group of Nobel Prize winners, the partner collections hold the most material on poet Nelly Sachs, who is pictured above. The first stanza of her poem “O The chimneys” is always particularly poignant to me. Click here for the text and analysis. (The book linked to here, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, is available in hard copy in the reference collection at the Center.)

Searching our catalog, search.cjh.org, for “Nelly Sachs” will reveal over a hundred items including more than ten original works by Sachs.

Of particular note is the exhibition catalog from an exhibit held by LBI in 1966, which documented the life and work of Nelly Sachs, Nobel Laureate in literature.

There is also an extensive collection of archival material held by the LBI archive that includes photographs of this exhibit. The entire collection, which amounts to a linear foot of material, is available entirely online. For photographs, including those above, click here.

Links to the digitized material are available via the finding aid.

For the exhibit documentation, reference Series IV: Leo Baeck Institute Exhibition April 1967, 1966-1967, or click here.

For poems, including translations and handwritten, material see Series III: Writings and Translations by Nelly Sachs, 1921, 1965-1966.

Many Jewish women who have not won the Nobel Prize have still made vast contributions to society. These range from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first female Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to mothers and teachers. To learn more about Jewish women in daily life, see the online bibliography, or search our collections by clicking here.

The above image of Nelly Sachs is from the Leo Baeck Institute collections.