East European Jewish American Collections
Manuscripts
Marmarosher Jewish Center (Cleveland, Ohio).Records, 1911-1961. 1 microfilm reel.
Records include financial records, minute book, and miscellany. Included are minutes of the Marmarosher Young Men's Association (1943); minutes of board meetings (1949-1961); Marmarosher Jewish Center bulletins, banquet programs, an address book, and a dues book (1911-1913). Includes Hebrew and English.Sherit Jacob Israel Synagogue (Cleveland, Ohio).
Records, 1919-1938. 1 microfilm reel.
Records of the Synagogue consist of financial records, minute book, membership lists, and miscellany. Included are membership lists and minutes of the Sharith Jacob Congregation Sisterhood, organized in 1932. In Hebrew and English.Temple of the Heights (Cleveland, Ohio).
Records, 1891-1920. 1 microfilm reel.
Records consist of a minute book. Includes German.
Monographs
The IHRC's Jewish American collection, numbering ca. 330 volumes, is not large in relationship to the amount of writing produced by and about this group. However, it does include useful material for the study of East European Jews in America.General histories of the Jewish experience in the United States include Henry L. Feingold's Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present (1974), Max I. Dimont's The Jews in America (1978), and The American Jewish Experience, edited by Jonathan Sarna (1986). The collection also contains Moses Rischin's Inventory of American Jewish History (1954), a bibliographic survey of the primary and secondary sources available to scholars. Two other useful reference tools are Irving J. Sloan's The Jews in America 1621-1970: A Chronology and Fact Book (1971), and Morris V. Schappes' A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States 1654-1875 (1971). In addition, the American Jewish Yearbook, published annually since 1900, chronicles the state of American Jewry through articles, biographical notes, and statistical information. The Center's collection includes volumes for 1911 through 1969.
Samuel Joseph's Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881-1910 (1914, 1969 reprint) is a useful early statistical and comparative study of the mass migration of East European Jews to the United States from the 1880s through World War I. A collection of documents, newspaper excerpts, and immigrant accounts of life in the United States is contained in Abraham J. Karp's Golden Door to America: The Jewish Immigrant Experience (1976). The East European Jewish Experience in America; A Century of Memories: 1882-1982, edited by Uri Herscher (1983), presents immigrant memoirs that illustrate the process of Americanization. Jewish society and culture are also the focus of a book of essays edited by Marshall Sklare, The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group (1958, 1977 reprint).
Histories of individual Jewish communities have been written since the 1880s, by both amateur and professional historians. The IHRC's collection includes a variety of these works, particularly those of scholars and whose content relates to the large Jewish population of New York City. Included are Hyman B. Grinstein's The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York, 1654-1860 (1945; reprint, 1976) and Arthur A. Goren's New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment, 1908-1922 (1970). There are a number of multi-ethnic studies on New York City that look at the Jewish experience. Two of these available in the IHRC's general collection are Thomas Kessner's The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915 (1977) and Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (1970).
Gerald Sorin's The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880-1920 (1985) documents activity in the labor movement and left-wing politics. In addition, the collection includes Melech Epstein's Profiles of Eleven (1965), containing biographies of such labor figures as Morris Hillquit and Sidney Hillman.
The history of Yiddish theater is the subject of Nahma Sandrow's Vagabond Stars (1977). The Center's collection also includes the popular play whose title became a catch phrase of Americanization, The Melting Pot (1909), by Israel Zangwill. Several other Zangwill plays dealing with Jewish immigrant life in the urban ghetto are also part of the collection. The Literature of American Jews, edited by Theodore L. Gross (1973), is an anthology of writing by Jewish Americans, including Michael Gold, Emma Lazarus, and Mary Antin. Perhaps the most famous Yiddish journalist of the time was Abraham Cahan, founder and editor of the Jewish Daily Forward. Excerpts from Cahan's work are contained in Moses Rischin's anthology Grandma Never Lived in America: The New York Journalism of Abraham Cahan (1985).
Literature on the Jewish experience in America cuts across many ethnic groups. Researchers may find useful material in other ethnic group collections, particularly those of East European immigrants.
Newspapers
American Jewish World, Minneapolis, MN. Weekly: 1971, 1981-date. English.Jewish Journal, Brooklyn, NY. Weekly: 1977-1978. English.
Jewish Press, Brooklyn, NY. Weekly: 1977-1978. English.
Jewish Record, Elizabeth, NJ. Weekly: 1941. English.
The Jewish Week & The American Examiner, New York, NY. Weekly: 1977. English.
JIAS News, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Quarterly: 1978-date. Includes English and some French.
Novy Americanetz (New American), Jersey City, NJ. Weekly: 1980. Russian.
Reform Judaism, New York, NY. Monthly: 1977. English.
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Milwaukee, WI. Weekly: 1974. English.
Serials
American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH. Quarterly: 1973-1982, 1984-date. English.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Annual Report, New York, NY. Annual: 1940-1946. English.
American Jewish Life, New York, NY. Monthly (except July and August): 1951-1952. English.
American Judaism, New York, NY. Quarterly: 1954, 1962, 1965. English.
Bnai Yiddish Journal, New York, NY. Bi-monthly: 1975. Includes English.
Calumet (Canadian Council of Christians and Jews), Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Monthly: 1979. English.
Canadian Jewish Yearbook, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Annual: 1959. English.
Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning Register, Philadelphia, PA. Annual: 1928-1929. English.
Identity, Minneapolis, MN. Semi-annual: 1967-1984. English.
The Immigrant, New York, NY. Monthly: 1928. English.
Institute of Jewish Affairs Periodic Reports on the Jewish Position, New York, NY. Monthly: 1964. English.
Issues, New York, NY. Semi-annual: 1962-1965, 1967-1969. English.
Jewish Currents, New York, NY. Monthly: 1977-1978. English.
Jewish Family Almanac, New York, NY. Annual: 1943. English.
Jewish Information, Chicago, IL. Quarterly: 1962. English.
Jewish Life, New York, NY. Monthly: 1956. English.
Kultur un Lebn (Culture and Life), New York, NY. Bi-monthly: 1975. Includes English.
Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XIII, London, England. Annual: 1968. English and German.
Modern Jewish Studies, Flushing, NY. Annual: 1977-1979. English.
New American (Committee for the Absorption of Soviet Emigres), Jersey City, NJ. Weekly: 1980. English and Russian.
The Record, Washington, DC. Semi-annual: 1968. English.
Search, Niles, IL. Quarterly: 1983-date. English.
Studies in American Jewish Literature, University Park, PA. Semi-annual: 1975-1979. English.
Tayerer Landsman (Dear Countrymen), Miami, FL. Monthly: 1987-date. English.
Unser Tsait (Our Time), New York, NY. Monthly: 1972-1979.
Yiddish Studies and MJS (Modern Jewish Studies) Newsletter, Flushing, NY. Quarterly: 1978-1979. Includes English.
YIVO News (previously titled News of the YIVO; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), New York, NY. Quarterly: 1984-1987. Includes English.
