Archives & Finding Aids
A selection of Finding Aids (Research Guides) for our Personal and Institutional holdings are available online at the Center for Jewish History Web site. Click here to view the finding aids.
The American Jewish Historical Society houses approximately 1,000 archival collections, comprising 10,000 linear feet.
The holdings are divided into two categories: Personal papers, which include the papers and artifacts of individuals and families, and Institutional records, which contain the records of schools, synagogues, orphanages and other organizations related to Jewish life in the Americas.
Materials in our archival collections include correspondence, journals, administrative records, clippings, manuscripts, and memorabilia. AJHS' oldest document is a court record created in 1572 during the Mexican Inquisition. The Society houses a significant amount of Colonial-era material and its collections document many of the important nineteenth- and twentieth-century events and trends of American Jewish life.
AJHS' collections include the personal papers of many notable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American political and communal Jewish leaders such as Haym Salomon, financier of the American Revolution; Uriah P. Levy, the nation's only Jewish Commodore; Moses Michael Hays, founder of the Bank of Boston; and Emma Lazarus, poet laureate of America's immigrants. Collections of notable twentieth-century figures include the papers of Henry Roth, author of the classic Call it Sleep; Molly Picon, international star of theater, radio, and television; and Stephen S. Wise, prominent Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.
AJHS houses the archival records of many of the nation's major Jewish organizations, especially those focusing on international relief efforts and national communal defense: the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds (now called United Jewish Communities); the American Jewish Congress; the National Jewish Welfare Board; the Baron de Hirsch Fund; the Boston office of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
Other institutional collections document educational, club, and religious activities: JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North American); Jewish Reconstructionist Federation; Congregation Shearith Israel, New York; the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work, New York; the National Association of Hillel Directors; and the Grand Street Boy's Association.
Researchers can access AJHS' archival collections in our Newton Centre, Massachusetts or New York, New York reading rooms, during our normal hours of Monday through Thursday, 9:30-4:30. To determine where a collection is located, please contact a member of the reference staff in the reading room by phone at 212-294-6160 x5100 or by email. The majority of the collections are in New York, while material related to New England Jewish history are housed in Newton Centre, MA.