New materials in the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society

Jacob Adler : actor of the Yiddish theater.

– The Jewish Defense Organization, a splinter group from Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, has donated 75 linear feet of its papers to the Society.

The material consists of publications defining the group’s positions regarding, for example, black extremist groups and the PLO, press clippings and correspondence. The collection is being processed and should be of great interest to researchers.

– The AJHS’s Performing Arts Collection has been enriched by the addition of several collections relating to the Jacob Adler theatrical family.

The collections were donated by the children of Lazar Freed and Celia Adler, and Stella Adler and Ludwig Satz.

They consist of photographs, performance notes, books, sheet music and ephemera relating to the Yiddish Theater in America. The Society has also received a donation of sixty-five letters written by Molly Picon to her dear friend Toni Schwartz (Chaikele) from 1950-1989.

Lazar Freed : actor of the Yiddish theater, with fellow actor, Jacob Ben-Ami.

– New to the collections : a letter from John Hancock dated June 24, 1771, written to Aaron Lopez that is now on display in the Society’s debut exhibit, “Seeing Ourselves;” a letter from Salomon Carvalho to Isaac Leeser; a petition signed by Judah P. Benjamin; a printed letter from Daniel L.

Peixotto to Isaac Leeser, dated 1832, respecting fasting during the cholera epidemic.

From Richmond, there are six news items from the 19th century relating to David Judah and a small book by Charlotte Elizabeth entitled The Glory of Israel.

– The papers, photographs and ephemera of Eric Briendel have been donated to the AJHS.

Briendel was an editorialist for the New York Post as well as a member of Mayor Ed Koch’s administration.

– Eleven reels of 16 mm film about the Catskills, as well as their video copies, have been donated to the Society’s Catskills Institute Archive.

The films are a unique record of recreational life in the Catskills in the 1950’s and 1960’s before the decline of that region, and an example of early color home movies.

– Accretions to the Henry Roth Collection (ephemera, audio tapes), the Hartman-Homecrest Orphanage Records (Basketball uniform, scrapbook and photographs) and several additions to the Jews in Sports Collection.

– The Society has also added several family histories and local histories to its growing collection.

Celia Adler : actress of the Yiddish theater
and film.

Recently added books include the following titles:

• The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews by Arthur A. Goren.
• Insider / Outsider : American Jews and Multiculturalism by David Baile, Micahel Galchinsky and Susanna Heschel.
• Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman
• Beyond the Synagogue Gallery : Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism by Karla Goldman.
• Black Zion : African American Religious Encounters with Judaism by Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch, eds.
• Women Who Would Be Rabbis by Pamela Nadell.
• Troubled Memory : Anne Levy, the Holocaust and David Duke’s Louisiana by Lawrence N. Powell.
• Sports and the American Jew by Steven A. Riess.
• Land and Community : Geography in Jewish Studies by Harold Brodsky, ed.
• The “Jewish Threat” : Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army by Joseph Bendersky.

The American Jewish Historical Society welcomes to the donation of archival and published material illustrative of the Jewish experience in the Americas as receded in the lives of individuals and organizations.

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