Inside…

Summer 2005 | Volume 1, Issue 3

From the Executive Director 2

Chairman’s Report 3

Editing America 4

A Talmudic Resurgence 5

At Home, in the World 6–9

First Community? 7

Center Newswire 10–11

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial 14

Development News 16

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E C E N T E R F O R J E W I S H H I S T O R Y

350 YEARSof American Jewish Life

see page 6

Center partner’s vast resources,the greatest collection of Dias-pora Jewish historical artifactsin the world.

What is happening todayat the Center for Jewish Histo-ry is nothing short of a revolu-tion—surely an intellectualone, but ultimately a socialand civic and perhaps politicalone as well. When people gainaccess to information, whenthe public can read and inter-pret for themselves withoutmediation, more understand-ing and more mutual respectwill likely follow. A renais-sance ideal, this second majorround of democratization ofthe “stuff” of the Jewish peo-ple is bound to have profoundand as yet unknown implica-tions and results. As the print-ing of the Talmud brought newdepth and breadth to the lifeof Jews in Europe and ulti-mately around the world, sotoo this democratization ofthe history of the Jewish peo-ple will likely lead to inspiringresults in the years to come.

graph? Words can describe thepast and exercise our imagina-tion, but encountering theseartifacts imparts something ofthe past’s realness, remindingus that our history was oncesomeone else’s present. Theseold, sometimes faded relics,these captivating visualimages, provide bridgesbetween yesterday and today,bringing about a richer, moreengaged historical understand-ing. By exciting our emotions,these artifacts encourage ourintellects as well, and can leadus to greater empathy andunderstanding.

This is why the digitalrevolution that is now takingplace is so significant. Untilrecently, the most engagingrecords of the past have beenavailable almost exclusively toscholars. Handling theserecords damages them andshortens their life span. Sothey have been carefullystored in climate-controlledchambers with access givenonly to a select few. But nowthe archival world, with theCenter for Jewish History inthe forefront, is seeking todigitize as much of the visual

n Memorial Day week-end, 2005, the New York TimesMagazine published a photo-graph of Charleston, SouthCarolina, at the end of the CivilWar. The city had been virtual-ly destroyed, and that simple,startling photograph taughtme more about Reconstructionthan all the books I had everread about that troubled peri-od in American history.

Several weeks earlier Ihad been given a preview ofthe Yeshiva University Muse-um’s show, “Printing the Tal-mud: From Bomberg toSchottenstein,” in which I sawbefore my eyes the first print-ed edition of the entire Talmudfrom 1523. The original pageswere turned out for me (andfor you, hopefully, as well) tosee their beauty and magnifi-cent, defying words. A fewweeks later, I entered theGreat Hall at the Center tostand before the famous 1818letter from Thomas Jeffersonto Mordecai Manuel Noahdefending religious freedom.

What is it that is so elec-trifying about being in thepresence of an original docu-ment, manuscript or photo-

record as we can. What, youmay ask, does digitizing do? Itexpands the access to artifacts,particularly through the Inter-net, to almost anyone whowishes to see them. Andalthough digitization does notallow you to touch the realobject, the quality of digitalimages possible today is soexact and so powerful that itseems as if you were with theoriginal itself. Sometimes,truthfully, even better thanbeing with the often fragile,crumbling original.

The Center began itswork by creating the web sitewww.jewsinamerica.org, usingimages from our five partnercollections to tell a multimediastory of grandeur and achieve-ment. We followed shortlythereafter by marking theanniversary of the end of WWIIby launching the web sitewww.lettersfront.org, portray-ing the glorious tale of the500,000 Russian Jews whoserved nobly and heroically inthe victorious Red Army victo-ry over the Nazis. By next fall,we plan to have added otherweb sites conveying to thepublic more and more of the

From the Executive Director

O

2

Home page of Jews in America: Our Story

(www.jewsinamerica.org) featuring an image from

the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute. A new

image from the web site’s gallery appears every

time the page is reloaded. (courtesy Center

for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute). Insets:

Albert Einstein, 1946. (Photo by Paula Wright;

courtesy Leo Baeck Institute); Front of a Rosh

Hashanah portrait greeting card, New York, ca. 1889,

(Photo by Ph. Hurwitz; courtesy YIVO); Members

of a Sephardic youth group at a festive gathering,

New York City, ca. 1949 (courtesy American

Sephardi Federation).

33

B OA R D O F D I R E C TO R SBruce Slovin, Chair

Joseph D. Becker, Vice ChairKenneth J. Bialkin, Vice ChairErica Jesselson, Vice Chair

Joseph Greenberger, SecretaryMichael A. Bamberger

Norman BelmonteGeorge Blumenthal

Eva B. CohnDavid Dangoor

Henry L. FeingoldMax Gitter

Michael JesselsonSidney Lapidus

Leon LevyTheodore N. MirvisNancy T. PolevoyRobert RifkindDavid Solomon

B OA R D O F OV E R S E E R SWilliam A. AckmanStanley I. BatkinJoseph D. Becker

Kenneth J. BialkinTracey BerkowitzLeonard BlavatnikGeorge BlumenthalArturo Constantiner

Mark GoldmanJoan L. Jacobson

Ira H. JollesHarvey M. Krueger

Sidney LapidusLeon Levy

Ira A. LipmanTheodore N. MirvisJoseph H. ReichRobert S. Rifkind

Stephen RosenbergBernard SelzBruce Slovin

Edward L. SteinbergJoseph S. SteinbergMichele Cohn Tocci

Fred S. ZeidmanRoy Zuckerberg

Peter A. Geffen, Executive Director

STA F FIra Berkowitz,

Chief Financial Officer

Sandra Rubin, Director of Development

Robert Friedman, Director, Genealogy Institute

Michael Glickman, Director of Public Affairs

Natalia Indrimi, Program Curator

Tamara Moscowitz, Director of Public Relations

Bob Sink, Chief Archivist and Project Director

Diane Spielmann, Ph.D.Director, Lillian Goldman

Reading Room

Lynne Winters, Director of Production

PA R T N E R I N ST I T U T I O N SAmerican Jewish Historical Society

David Solomon, Executive Director

American Sephardi FederationEsme M. Berg, Executive Director

Leo Baeck InstituteCarol Kahn Strauss, Executive Director

Yeshiva University MuseumSylvia A. Herskowitz, Director

YIVO Institute for Jewish ResearchCarl J. Rheins, Executive Director

AC A D E M I C A DV I S O RY CO U N C I L

Elisheva Carlebach, Co-ChairQueens College

Michael A. Meyer, Co-ChairHebrew Union College

Robert ChazanNew York University

Todd EndelmanUniversity of Michigan

Henry L. FeingoldBaruch College

David FishmanJewish Theological Seminary

Ernest FrerichsBrown University

Jane GerberGraduate Center of the City

University of New York

Deborah Dash MooreVassar College

Riv-Ellen PrellUniversity of Minnesota

Lawrence H. SchiffmanNew York University

Jeffrey ShandlerRutgers University

Paul ShapiroUnited States Holocaust

Memorial Museum

Chava WeisslerLehigh University

Beth S. WengerUniversity of Pennsylvania

Steven J. ZippersteinStanford University

Editor: Benjamin Soskis

Managing Editor: Tamara Moscowitz

The Jewish Experience is made possible, in part, with a grant from

the Liman Foundation.

Design: Flyleaf

From theChairman

Published by Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011212-294-8301 fax: 212-294-8302

www.cjh.org and www.jewsinamerica.org

ear Friends and Colleagues,

How to achieve an exemplary com-memoration? This is a crucialquestion for American Jews whoare dedicated to understandingtheir remarkable heritage. It is evenmore important for those of us whoare committed to sharing that history with the general public andto preserving that heritage for posterity. This year has been blessedwith a confluence of anniversaries, and the Center for Jewish Histo-ry has demonstrated its unique and important place in the culturaland intellectual landscape in the way that it has celebrated them,achieving, we believe, exemplary commemorations.

This summer is an especially exciting season at the Center,which is hosting landmark exhibitions to commemorate the 350thanniversary of the first Jewish settlement in North America. To markthis occasion, the Center’s five partners—the American Jewish His-torical Society, American Sephardi Federation with Sephardi House,Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institutefor Jewish Research—have all mounted extraordinary exhibitionscelebrating the diversity and vibrancy of American Jewry.

The landmark exhibit at the Center, “Greetings from Home,350 Years of American Jewish Life,” organized and presented by theAmerican Jewish Historical Society, in cooperation with the ASF andYUM, is associated with the official activities of the congressionallymandated Commission for Commemorating the 350th Anniversary ofJewish Settlers and explores the process by which Jews establisheda home for themselves in this new nation.

We are also proud that coinciding with the 350th are twoanniversary exhibits of partner institutions. “YIVO at 80,” organ-ized by YIVO, highlights documents and photographs from its vastarchival collection and offers a fascinating look at Eastern Euro-pean Jews as they established themselves in their new homeland;and “Starting Over: The Experience of German Jews in America,1830-1945,” organized by the Leo Baeck Institute in conjunctionwith its 50th anniversary, chronicles the significant role GermanJews played in shaping contemporary American intellectual andcultural life.

Visitors to the Center will also have an opportunity to viewYeshiva’s University Museum’s “Printing the Talmud: Bomberg toSchottenstein,” a fascinating exploration of the study of the Talmudfrom its development in ancient times to its current incarnation onthe World Wide Web.

So how does one achieve an exemplary commemoration? Thisyear at the Center for Jewish History is our answer to that question.It involves a deep engagement with the past that also insists onlooking toward the future. It requires seeing the past as alive andvital, and understanding our responsibilities to preserve and learnfrom it. This year, the Center for Jewish History is making one of themost important contributions to our city’s unparalleled cultural life.Your support will ensure our continued success, for this year, and formany years to come.

D

FRED

CH

AR

LES

Page one of first clean

copy of Howl, Part I, sent

by the author to Jack

Kerouac in 1955 who,

in turn, sent it on to John

Clellon Holmes. Holmes

returned the manuscript

to Ginsberg in 1980.

Photo courtesy of the

© Allen Ginsberg Trust

Editing Americaby Liel Leibovitz

diting courts a certain ambivalence. Often, it is perceivedas the dark doppelganger of the creative process, the

unproductive force that torments the writer with comments andcorrections in a sharp, red pen. But let a book, an article, amovie run too long, and a common gripe is sounded: this couldhave used an editor.

The question of the nature of the editing process is at theheart of an upcoming series of screenings and panel discussionsat the Center for Jewish History this summer, titled “EditingAmerica,” and the answers it offers are unorthodox.

“Editing,” says Natalia Indrimi, the series’ curator, “isabout approaching preexisting text from the perspective of anoutsider and tweaking its structure to generate fuller and newlynuanced content.” This, she adds, applies not only to journalism,literature or film, but also extends to other fields, such as music,religion, politics and social action.

In other words, far from being an impediment to creativi-ty, or a utilitarian footnote to a preexisting text, editinginvolves the reshuffling of reality’s component parts. An editor,then, could very well be someone like Rabbi Sabato Morais,founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who was one of thefirst American Jewish clergyman to introduce social issues, suchas slavery, into the religious arena, or union activist BaruchCharney Vladeck, the head of the Jewish Labor Committee, whohelped transform the Jewish-American labor movement from atrickle to a torrent.

Both these men, as well as several others discussedthroughout the series, fit squarely into Indrimi’s definition ofediting; both took preexisting elements—a sleepy and uncertainreligiosity, a hesitant and low-key labor movement—and re-assessed their meaning according to a larger concept.

In both cases, the larger concept is the same: It involvesimmigrants wishing to wed Jewish and European traditions tothe exigencies of life in America, realizing both the opportuni-ties and the limitations of their new homeland.

The intricate relations between the spatial and the textu-al, of course, are a staple of the Jewish experience: Consider theTalmud, an ongoing process of editing orchestrated by Jews

E

“Tracate Eruvin”

Salonika or Fex,

1521. Printed by

Don Judah

Gedahia or

Samuel Nedivot.

Courtesy of The

Jewish Theologi-

cal Seminary of

America.

wishing to recompile and revisit their basiccodex in order to make it suitable to new times,new continents, new sensibilities. The result isthe inimitable Talmudic page, containing textand commentary, a paragon of editing, creating aliterary dynamic that simultaneously expands,alters and preserves.

The Talmudic tradition, however, is not lim-ited to religious writings. Take William Shawn, forexample: One of the few men discussed in theseries who was actually a professional editor, TheNew Yorker’s Mr. Shawn, as he was known, hailedfrom Chicago, a first generation American Jew.Since the beginning of his tenure at the magazinein 1933, Shawn did more than edit pieces; he edited—that is tosay, rewrote, redesigned, reinvented—the reality of Americanjournalism itself.

Consider this: Shawn provided his writers with salaries andoffices, demanding nothing in return; some, like JosephMitchell, produced only a few works in decades-long tenures.Shawn was never afraid to break form, as he did when he dedi-cated the entire magazine to one story, John Hersey’s harrowingtale of the aftermath of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Hewould purchase stories from writers and let them brew formonths, even years, until they were just ripe for the zeitgeist.

These examples transcend mere journalistic tactics; theyreflect a profound intellectual sensibility that was more than alittle bit informed by Jewish values, encouraging pieces infusedwith a sense of moral urgency rather than the magazine’s tradi-tional slice-of-life pieces, rich with bemused bonhomie. Shawn’spredecessor, The New Yorker’s founder Harold Ross, conceived themagazine as a blasé and ironic affair, an intellectual anodynewritten for Manhattan’s Jazz Era upwardly mobile elite. Shawn,on the other hand, injected it with the gravitas it enjoys to thisday. He brought with him not only a whiff of European journal-ism, where intellectuals often took over countless columns inbudding publications, but also a passion for the written wordand its capacity to change the world that is fundamental to the Jewish tradition. Think of it as the People of the Book inmagazine form.

This, more than any actual concrete achievement, may bewhy Shawn has come to represent the quintessential editor; hislegacy and originality lie not in creating something from noth-ing, but rather in reassembling something—a magazine—in aninventive way. This, Indrimi says, is “the essence of editing, look-ing at the existing elements, altering their proportions, adding acritical dimension, making something new and more inclusive.”

J E W S A N D

continued on page 15

4

“Der Babylonische Talmud in Auswahl” Trans-

lated by Jacob Fromer. Berlin, 1924.

Published by Brandes Verlag.

35

irst, this March, there was the Siyyum haShas, the eventcelebrating the completion of a seven-and-a-half-year

cycle of study of the Babylonian Talmud. About a hundred thousand people were hooked up elec-tronically, and 20,000 attended inMadison Square Garden. Then, later thatmonth, there was the celebration, sponsored by the Mesorah Heritage Foun-dation, the research arm of ArtScroll, ofthe completion of their English transla-tion and commentary on the BabylonianTalmud, the Schottenstein edition. Andnow the Yeshiva University Museum, atthe Center for Jewish History, is featur-ing its exhibit entitled, “Printing theTalmud: From Bomberg to Schotten-stein.” This superb exhibit traces thedissemination of the Talmud as a cultur-al monument of the Jewish people. Itcouldn’t have come at a better time: Put simply, we are witness-ing a phenomenal renaissance in the study of the Talmud that,as it continues to spread beyond the Orthodox community, hasthe potential to play a major role in the revival of Jewish obser-vance and commitment.

The Talmud has a long history, originating in the oraltradition of biblical times. Interpretations of the Torah passeddown in various forms and expanded in every generation; thesetraditions were codified in the third century into the Mishnahand the other early Rabbinic works. The Mishnah served as thebasis for the emergence of two Talmuds, explanations of the orallaw in the Land of Israel and Babylonia. Edited and transmittedorally, these texts were eventually written down, constitutingthe Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. As a result of a series of

A TalmudicResurgenceby Lawrence H. Schiffman

factors, literary and historical, the Babylonian Talmudbecame the final, authoritative collection, guiding thesubsequent development of Judaism in medieval andmodern times.

To understand the Talmud is to understandmuch of the essence of Judaism. For Judaism is a totalcivilization, aspects of which can be reflected anddefined through the looking-glass of halakhah (legalteaching) and aggadah (non-legal teachingsdesigned to inculcate the principles of Jewish

thought and theology). Yet Judaism also involves the creation ofa reality beyond that of time and space, one that continues toshape the Jewish present, while linking it to other places andother times. The sages of the first century debate with those ofthe twentieth century, and the Babylonian Rabbis interact withthose of France. The Talmud was able to grant significance to

every human act, and to place the lifeof the individual Jew in collectivenational and cosmic context, therebyforging a Jewish community thattranscends time and space, while rec-ognizing their particularities. Indeed,the great prominence of the Babylon-ian Talmud reminds us of thepotential for Diaspora countries torise to the greatest of heights, even asIsrael remains the spiritual center ofthe Jewish people.

The first extant mention ofthe written Babylonian Talmud is inthe early tenth century, but it mostlikely began circulating in the Jewish

world as a written manuscript before that, sometime after theIslamic conquests of the seventh century. The transmission ofthese manuscripts testifies to the Talmud’s influence and to thespread of the Jewish tradition to all corners of the earth, as themanuscripts reflect the scribal habits, linguistic traditions, andtextual features of each community. Yet this diffusion was notunchallenged.

During the medieval period, Christian opposition to theTalmud grew more strident and led to the confiscation and burn-ing of the Talmud in France in 1242. Yet attempts to stopprinting and dissemination must have been stimulated in part bythe interest in the Talmud even among the Christian intelli-gentsia. In fact, it was the interest demonstrated by Christianssuch as Daniel Bomberg, publisher of the first complete edition

F

Rehov Synagogue Mosaic Floor, 6th-7th century,

stone tesserae. On loan from The Israel Antiquities

Authority. Exhibited at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

T H E W O R D

continued on page 13

cal Society in its new exhibit, “Greet-ings from Home: 350 Years ofAmerican Jewish Life,” commemorat-ing the 1654 arrival of the first Jewishcommunity to North American shores.Indeed, the curators of this exhibithave coupled their focus on the dis-tinctiveness of the American Jewishexperience with an exploration of theways in which that experience isbound up in the worldwide Jewishexperience, in the collectivity of ClalIsrael. The exhibit highlights thetransatlantic elements of AmericanJewry: the exchange of letters, remit-

tances of money, return visits, enduring family relationships,and philanthropic interventions, which formed a bridge acrossthe Atlantic. “This [emphasis on the relationship between OldWorld and New] is at the cutting edge of American Jewish his-torical scholarship right now,” says Diner, who served as anadvisor to the exhibit, and contributed an essay to the exhibi-tion catalog. “We maintained a dual focus on the development ofJewish life in America and the connections to Jews around theworld. That’s something that hasn’t yet been done.”

This international focus accords with the breadth of thearchival collections of the Center for Jewish History’s con-stituent partners, and makes special sense this year, marking the80th anniversary of the establishment of the YIVO Institute forJewish Research. YIVO is the preeminent institution in the studyof East European history and culture, and contains perhaps thenation’s most impressive archives on the history of American

At Home, in the World:350 Years of American Jewry

by Benjamin Soskis

hat then is the American, this new man? The French immigrant Hector St. Jeande Crèvecoeur famously posed this question more than two centuries ago. His

answer—that he was something new and plural and vital—linked the indeterminacyof American identity with the potency of American identity. The American was excep-tional to the extent that such aquestion could even be asked ofhim or her, and ever since, Ameri-ca’s often awkward grappling withits ambiguous character has beencoupled with its more confidentclaims to exceptionalism.

And if so for the American,even more so for the AmericanJew. There is no doubt that theAmerican Jewish experience isunlike any that has preceded it.The United States has been a netimporter, and not an exporter ofJews, and once settled here, Jewshave enjoyed rights, privileges andsocial status often denied them byother nations. In part, this isbecause, as New York Universityprofessor of American Jewish His-tory Hasia Diner has suggested, inAmerica other groups have servedas this nation’s Jews—thedespised group upon which themajority enacted their frustrationsand fears. Jews were deemed lesstheologically and ecclesiasticallythreatening than Catholics, andless racially threatening thanAfrican-Americans. Moreover, unlikethose other groups—and unlikeEuropean Jews, for whom the process of emancipation broughtwith it a protracted public discussion in legislatures and news-papers on the nature of Jewish citizenship—Jews in Americawere largely free to define their identities privately, voluntarily,communally, without the concern that their own political eman-cipation would depend on the public’s acceptance of thosedefinitions. That does not mean that the process of forging anAmerican Jewish identity has been untroubled—the interplaybetween ethnic, religious, and cultural identifications has beenanything but—yet it does suggest that the free market in reli-gious affiliations that America has encouraged has produced themost vibrant, the most diverse, the most interesting Jewish com-munity in the world.

The difficulty, though, is to prevent a recognition ofexceptionalism from becoming an endorsement of parochialism.This is the challenge embraced by the American Jewish Histori-

Left: A poster advertising a Chicago

production of the 1929 play Greetings from

Home by Sam Auerback and Hershel Shorr.

Kanof Yiddish Theater Poster collection; Top:

Interested in Athletics? Jewish Community

Centers Publicity Photo, 1950s National

Jewish Welfare Board Records. Courtesy

American Jewish Historical Society.

W

3 5 0 Y E A R S O F A M E

6

continued on page 12

37

Jewish immigration. In honor of the anniversary, this year theinstitute has prepared a special exhibit, echoing many of thethemes in “Greetings from Home,” and showcasing some of thehighlights from its archives and library. As Carl Rheins, YIVO’sexecutive director, explains, “YIVO is the nexus of a thousandyears of Ashkenazic culture, linking tenth-century Poland to thepresent ... YIVO [links] the American Jewish experience with theEuropean, with Yiddish as the linchpin.” Indeed, given thatmore than ninety percent of American Jews are of Eastern Euro-pean origin, the study of the American Jewish experience mustnecessarily incorporate the Eastern European experience as well.Marty Peretz, chairman of the board of overseers of YIVO, sug-gests that the history of New World Judaism is “intrinsicallylinked” to the history of Eastern European Judaism. “The Amer-ican Jewish labor movement…the banking community, theinfluence of scholarship and culture is ultimately based on thetraditions of Vilna, Kiev, and Warsaw. From Hollywood to CityCollege, everywhere you look in America,” you can detect theinfluence of Eastern European Jewry, he claims.

“Greetings from Home” shares this same sense of the con-tinuities and engagements between the Old World and the New,and that relationship is nicely expressed in the artifact fromwhich the title of the exhibit was taken: a 1926 poster fromChicago for the Yiddish drama, Greetings from Home. On theposter’s left we view a shtetl scene: A pious, bearded man,dressed in traditional garb, flanked by broken furniture andstanding in a dilapidated cottage, prepares to send a letter, whilea circle of chagrined villagers looks on. On the right side of theposter, there is a very different tableau: a group of men andwomen, elegantly dressed, sit in a theater box, while a distin-guished-looking man with a similarly disconsolate expressionreceives a letter from the US Postal Service. These two scenes areseparated by the roiling ocean—with a lone steamer sailing inthe background, and the Statue of Liberty presiding in between.

In one reading, the meaning of the poster is clear: the OldWorld family informs their New World kin of some terrible tragedythat has befallen their community. And the desperation of eachside might reflect as well the recent passage of severe immigrationrestrictions in 1924, which drastically reduced the number ofimmigrants allowed into the United States from eastern and

In January 1654, after nearlynine years of fighting, Por-tuguese-Brazilian liberationforces succeeded in defeatingthe Dutch West India Companyin the Pernambuco region ofBrazil. The loss of New Hol-land, as the Dutch called theirBrazilian colony, had a pro-found effect on Jewish historythroughout the AtlanticWorld. The region had beenhome to the first outwardlypracticing Jewish communityin the New World, but in theaftermath of the Portuguesereconquest and their reinstitu-tion of the Inquisition in

Brazil, Jews had to flee Pernambuco. Many returned to Amster-dam or migrated to Caribbean colonies such as Curaçao,Barbados, and Martinique. Most famous among these exiles wasa shipload of twenty-three Sephardic refugees from Brazil thatcame ashore in New Amsterdam in September 1654.

The arrival of these twenty-three refugees has often beenviewed as the inauguration of Jewish life in the territory thatwould become the United States, and the 350th anniversary oftheir disembarkation has been met with a torrent of interest andattention. Everything from newspaper editorials and magazinearticles, to short films, dedicated web sites, books, and museumexhibits have all drawn attention to those original Twenty-Three. And it is to culminate the celebration of this anniversarythat the American Jewish Historical Society prepared the exhib-it, “Greetings from Home: 350 Years of American Jewish Life.”

There is no doubt that the 350th anniversary celebrationshave been tremendously successful in stimulating broad publicinterest in the long, fascinating history of Jews in Americansociety. Yet, the singling out of these twenty-three refugeesfrom Brazil as the founding mothers and fathers of America’sJewish community and applying September 1654 as the formalbeginning of this community presents an intriguing conundrumfor the professional historian. While documentary evidenceregarding the Twenty-Three is fragmentary and limited, the gapsin our body of knowledge do at least provide the historian withan opportunity to complicate the story of New Amsterdam’s earlyJewish population and interrogate the concept of the “first Jewish community in America.”

It first bears noting that the twenty-three Sephardic

First Community?Complicating the Story of New Amsterdam’s Original Jewish Populationby Noah L. Gelfand

Jewish chaplains, Kobler Field, the Marianas, 1945. Aryeh Lev Papers,

National Jewish Welfare Board. Copyright American Jewish Historical

Society.

Shearith Israel, Mill Street

synagogue, 1730. Courtesy

American Jewish Historical Society

R I C A N J E W I S H L I F E

continued on page 8

8

southern Europe. The single ship sailing in the background thenbecomes both an image of hope, and of anxiety (and in fact, theposter advertises a future play entitled The Closed Door).

Yet the meaning of home in the poster is not entirely clear,and that ambiguity can perhaps also be read in the distressedexpressions of each side. For what does it mean for one’s home tobe the site of grief and persecution, and what does it mean to haveone’s home closed to friends and family? Is the “greeting fromhome” a sort of chastisement to the comfortable, perhaps even assimilated, American Jews about forgetting their less fortu-nate Old World brothers andsisters? Or is the irony of thegreeting that the contrastbetween the two groups itselfinsists upon a redefinition of thelocation of home to more favor-able shores? Does “home” conveyOld World commitments or the tugof New World possibilities? Theposter itself is nicely balancedbetween those two interpreta-tions, but it’s something of afearful symmetry: for is the secu-rity of home compromised whenits meaning is so indeterminate?

Yet, as Hasia Diner pointsout in her catalog essay, theambiguity as to the meaning of home has not always been so prob-lematic for American Jews; indeed, it has often been the source ofstrength. For a diasporic people, the concept of home was alwaysmore latticed, more fluid, more open to revision. “[T]heir past hadbeen that of the proverbial ‘Wandering Jew,’ a steady movementaround the globe from homes in the south to new homes in thenorth, and back again from the north to the south; from east towest and west to east,” Diner writes. Jewish involvement withtrade, their comfort with the life of the peddler and itinerant,meant that home was as much an idea as it was a physical sanc-tuary. Indeed, Jewish merchants and shopkeepers were often someof the earliest settlers in frontier towns, and they carried theirunsettled understandings of home among their wares.

And over the course of American Jewish history, theseunderstandings of home have been able to embrace severalnotable paradoxes. The most pronounced of these, and the onethat “Greetings from Home” has illuminated so finely, is that themore at home Jews have felt in America, the more their gaze hasbeen focused outward. The more at home Jews are, the more theyregard themselves as part of the larger, worldwide Jewish com-munity, and insist on fulfilling the obligations of thatrelationship. When American Jews are most comfortable in theirAmericanness, they are most able to transcend it.

In a sense, the American Jewish engagement in the worldis simply the return of an early favor. After all, when the gover-

nor of Dutch New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, sought to expelthe few Jewish refugees who had migrated to the colony in themid 17th century, only the intervention of the colony’s propri-etors, Amsterdam’s West India Company, urged on by its Jewishshareholders, overturned his decision. And for much of the firstcentury and a half of American Jewish life, favors often traveledwestward across the Atlantic. The exhibit reveals an AmericanJewish population enmeshed in a web of shared responsibilityand mutual concerns. In 1729, a fledgling congregation in colo-nial New York wrote to a more established one in Jamaica, askingfor support; in 1759, the Touro synagogue in Providence, RhodeIsland, wrote to its older brother in New York.

Then, as Steven H. Jaffe, an independent historian and the

curator of the exhibit, explains,“During the nineteenth century,at a point when American Jewswere more numerous, prosper-

ous, and secure in their rights as Americans, they began to feela duty to provide funds and other forms of support to Jewsaround the world, especially in moments of crisis or persecu-tion.” Indeed, “Greetings from Home” features some notableartifacts from the long, distinguished tradition of Jewish fund-raising. One of the most remarkable is a letter sent by aSephardic congregation in London, in 1775, to the Jews of Con-gregation of Shearith Israel in New York City, informing themthat the Londoners had just received an emissary from the Jew-ish community in Smyrna, in what is now Turkey. Thecommunity there had just suffered a terrible fire, whichdestroyed their synagogues and houses of study, and so they hadsent the emissary to London to raise money. The Londoners, inturn, forwarded the request to the New Yorkers, remarking ontheir reputation for generosity. Tugging at the heartstrings (andthe pocketbook) while massaging benefactors’ self-regard: inmodern times, a notably successful philanthropic strategy. Theexhibit documents the continuation of this tradition of Ameri-can Jewish engagement with the world since the colonialera—from the mammoth petition book protesting the KishinevPogrom of 1903 to posters in support of Soviet Jews.

But besides chronicling this commitment to internationalphilanthropy, how can an exhibit demonstrate being at home inAmerica? Of course, the exhibit does not skimp on many of theclassic figures of American Jewish history—there is material on

At Home, in the Worldcontinued from page 6

Left to right: Molly Picon (1898-1992), in Sipke. Hand-colored photograph, Molly Picon Papers, American Jewish Historical Society; Jewish immigrants out-

side a shelter run by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), New York City, 1916 (courtesy YIVO Institute for Jewish Research); two-dollar Confederate bill,

1862, Judah B. Benjamin Papers, American Jewish Historical Society; Seixas Family circumcision set and trunk, ca. 18th century, wooden box covered in

cowhide with silver implements: 2 silver trays, 1 clip, 1 pointer, silver flask, spice vessel, 3 small silver items, trunk, American Jewish Historical Society;

Gore/Lieberman presidential campaign poster, 2000, courtesy American Jewish Historical Society

9

Einstein and on Irving Berlin, on Hank Greenberg and on Houdi-ni, on Isaac Mayer Wise and on Stephen Wise. And part of beingat home in a place is taking on its own failings, and so the exhib-it does not shy away from Jewish participation in the slave trade(while not encouraging that unfortunate canard that Jews borea large responsibility for it, a charge without any historical back-ing). The exhibit is also able to demonstrate how the greatmoments of American history have intersected with the lives ofAmerican Jews, some ordinary, some distinguished, displayingprayers offered in support of George Washington and the Patriotcause; artifacts from the life of businessman and philanthropistAdolphus Simeon Solomons, who helped to achieve the revokingof General Ulysses S. Grant’s order barring Jews from Tennessee,

Kentucky and Mississip-pi; and the chipped,defiant portable Torahark that World War IIchaplain Joseph S. Shubow carried with him in the back of hisjeep while visiting soldiers and displaced persons in the field.

But in “Greetings from Home,” this heroic element in Amer-ican Jewish history is also tempered with the more prosaic andplebian. Such attention in fact honors the particularities of theAmerican Jewish experience. For as Diner argues in her essay, thestory of American Jewry is one best told from the grassroots level.The United States had no rabbinical leadership till the middle ofthe 19th century; nor did the government ever officially recognizea particular Jewish communal organization, with its representa-tive religious authorities, as it did in Europe. Instead, powershifted to the laity, and to a proliferation of congregations andvoluntary associations, an energy radiating from the bottom up.

Based in part on Diner’s own work, Jaffe has chosen toexpress that grassroots emphasis through a fascinating sectionon Jewish-American food. True, “you can’t get more banal thanfood,” admits Jaffe, while lamenting that he is limited to archae-ological and nonperishable artifacts—no kugel will be served—but food “so pervades Jewish identity, is so defining of comfortand conflict” for Jews, that he sees it as an essential ingredientin the appreciation of the American Jewish experience.

Take, for instance, the 1933 cookbook on display in theexhibit, full of recipes for how to cook with Crisco vegetableshortening. “People don’t realize this,” says Jaffe, “but Criscorepresents this amazing moment in American Jewish history,because it’s parve. So you can cook anything with it.” Proctor &Gamble, which invented Crisco, quite shrewdly appreciated thepotential market they had among American Jewish housewivesfor their product; in fact, when they announced the invention ofthe product in 1910, they declared that Crisco was what the“Hebrew race has been waiting 4,000 years” for. To solidify thismarket, they created a cookbook, printed in both Yiddish andEnglish, full of Crisco-friendly recipes. The book itself is a fasci-nating token of Americanization, of generational change and

generational continuity, for the expec-tation was that the immigrant mamawould follow the Yiddish, while her moreacculturated daughter would read theEnglish. The kitchen would be the site ofthe perpetuation of an identity secure inboth its American-ness and Jewishness.

Of course, being too much athome can have its perils. Some wouldargue that a level of discomfort is nec-

essary for American Jews to maintain their separateness. Theymight even invoke the famous story from the 1883 celebratorybanquet at a posh resort for the inaugural class of graduatesfrom Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, the first successful Jew-ish school of higher education in America. A number of Orthodoxrabbis in attendance stormed out when they were presented withthe first course—a decidedly non-kosher shrimp appetizer—anearly protest, one might suggest, against “comfort food.”

But what this exhibit demonstrates so admirably is that,ultimately, being at home in America has not attenuated Amer-ican Jews’ religious identity, but expanded it. The ambiguity ofthe meaning of home was not a sign of the weakness of Ameri-can Jewish identity but of its variegated strength. Perhaps nofigure featured in the exhibit demonstrates this point betterthan Molly Picon, the star of the Yiddish stage and screen. Bornon the Lower East Side, Picon became immensely popular withAmerican Yiddish-speaking audiences, with American televisionviewers, and with theater audiences from Chicago to Johannes-burg to Vilna. The exhibit features a poster from a 1932 BuenosAires production of the Yiddish play, Oy iz dos a Meydl!—“Whata Girl!”—or, as the poster declares, “Ay que Muchacha!” In itslinguistic jumble, its transatlantic fluency, the advertisementpromotes not just Picon’s performance, but the American Jewishexperience itself. Far from home, Picon helped to convey itsmany meanings, its varied blessings.

Benjamin Soskis is a Ph.D in American religious and intellectualhistory at Columbia University.

American Jewish Historical SocietyCustodian of the Records of the Jewish Experience in America Founded in 1892, the American Jewish Historical Society is one ofcountry’s preeminent historical institutions. Its mission is to collect,

preserve, and disseminate the record of Jewish life in America. The Society hasamassed a vast collection of books, archives, photographs, and other objects onthe American Jewish experience which is available to scholars, academics, andothers who are interested in learning more about the rich heritage of the Amer-ican Jewish community.

YIVO Institute for Jewish ResearchUnderstanding the Eastern European Roots of the Contemporary Jewish ExperienceFounded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania), YIVO is a

research, training, and resource center in Jewish studies specializing in thehistory and culture of Ashkenazic Jewry with an emphasis on Eastern EuropeanJews and their descendants in the United States. The YIVO Archives and Libraryhouse 360,000 books, and 220,000 photographs, forming an unparalleledrepository on the life of Eastern European Jews.

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The Center for Jewish History is proud to have become a Smithsonian Insti-

tution Affiliate. Through Smithsonian Affiliations Program, the Center and

its partners will benefit from greater national recognition and increased

access to the Smithsonian's collections and resources, including member-

ship initiatives and cross-marketing opportunities.

This designation as a Smithsonian Affiliate is a significant recognition of

the importance of the Center for Jewish History to the Jewish community

and to Jews around the world.

Center Newswire Events

Over eighty hedge fund managers gathered

on Tuesday, April 19, at the Center for Jewish

History for an evening devoted to “The History

of Jewish Involvement in Business and

Finance.” Co-chaired and underwritten by Joseph S.

Steinberg and William A. Ackman, members of the Board

of Overseers, the evening began with tours of the

Center’s archives and the Strashun Rare Book Room.

Following was a slide presentation, with the

philanthropist and historian, Ambassador John

Loeb, Jr. and the historian Dr. Kenneth Libo,

entitled “The Lehman-Loebs and Their

Ancestors: Three Centuries of American Jewish

Business History.” An engaging and lively discussion on Ambassador Loeb’s

illustrious family — which includes Herbert H. Lehman, former governor of New

York and the current District Attorney Robert Morgenthal — preceded a talk about more intimate topics on the subject

of finance. Among the eight topics discussed with the historians over dinner (in small groups in designated rooms

around the Center) were: “Interest Rates in the Ancient World,” with Richard Sylla; and “Wandering Jews: Peddlers,

Immigrants and the Discovery of New Worlds,” with Hasia Diner. Joining Mr. Ackman and Mr. Steinberg on the

Committee were Bruce and Tracey Berkowitz, David Neikrug, Tonia Pankopf, Charles J. Rose, Bruce Slovin, and

Michele Cohn Tocci.

(A) Joseph S. Steinberg (B) Avivith Oppenheim and Tracey Berkowitz (C) Brian Feltzin and Jonathan Gray

(D) Alessandra Rovati, Olivier Sarfeti, Tonia Pankopf, and Ben Sontheimer (E) Bruce Slovin and Michele Cohn Tocci

(F) Ambassador John L. Loeb, Sharon Handler (background), and William Ackman (G) Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr.,

Joseph S. Steinberg, Dr. Kenneth Libo

The History of Jewish Involvement inBusiness and Finance

(A) Congressman Jerrold Nadler with

Peter A. Geffen, Executive Director of

the Center for Jewish History

(B) David Weprin, New York City

Councilman and Chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee

(C) New York State Senator Eric T. Sneiderman and Sidney Lapidus,

President of the American Jewish Historical Society

JewishLeaders Visitthe CenterMarch 20, 2005

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Lectures (A) “The Cultural Politics of

Dislocation: Clarice Lispector and

Ways of Being Jewish in Brazil”

(left, Lispector; right, translator

and speaker Gregory Rabassa).

March 13, 2005 (LBI/YIVO)

(B) “Rescued from the Reich: How

One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the

Lubavitcher Rebbe.” Book launch

with Bryan Rigg. January 11, 2005

(LBI/YIVO) (C) “Latin American

Art and Identity Symposium”

March 23, 2005 (YUM) Moderator

Julian Zazagoita, Director, El Museo

del Barrio (D) “Nazi Laws, Jewish

Lives: Letters from Vienna,” a book

launch with Edith Kurzweil.

February 1, 2005 (YIVO)

FilmsThe 9th International Sephardic Film Festival —

Roots and Origins; February 3 to 9, 2005

(A) Abjad directed by Abolfazl Jalili

(B) Derrida directed by Amy Ziering Kofman

Expression and Exploration: Paths of Jewish

Artists Monday Night Film Series

(C) Judy Chicago discussing her film The Dinner

Party shown on December 6, 2004

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Latin American Artists Exhibit at YeshivaUniversity Museumat the Center(A) “Manhattan Mincha Map,” a series of photographs by

Jaime Permuth on display January 30 — June 19

(B) “Having Trouble to Pray,” drawings and paintings by

Moico Yaker, on display February 6 – May 1, 2005

Exhibitions presented by Yeshiva University Museum.

Performance (A) Robin Hirsch in Kinderszenen: Scenes

from a Childhood, the first of a seven-part

performance cycle entitled Mosaic:

Fragments of Jewish Life. Two performances:

March 29, 30, 2005 (LBI) (B) Z’VI, a work-in-progress

of a an electro-acoustic opera by Richard

Teitelbaum (shown). April 13, 2005 (LBI)

(C) Sephardic Resonances with Myrna Herzog

on viola da gamba. January 19, 2005 (ASF)

Recent Programs

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refugees were not the firstoutwardly practicing Jews toset foot in the future UnitedStates. While there may havebeen others who have escapedthe historical record, we knowfor certain that JoachimGaunse, a Jewish metallurgistand mining engineer fromBohemia, sojourned briefly onthe Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina in 1585,looking for valuable mineralsat Roanoke before sailing backto England with Sir FrancisDrake in 1586. More signifi-cant in terms of colonialsettlement and communitydevelopment, however, wasthe appearance of threeAshkenazi Jews in New Am-sterdam in the summer of 1654,shortly before the arrival oftheir Sephardic brethren fromBrazil. According to councilminutes, port books, and courtrecords, Jacob Barsimon, mostlikely along with SolomonPietersen and Asser Levy ofVilna, all identified on the documents as Jews, reachedNew Amsterdam on the Peereboom [Peartree] fromAmsterdam via London on

August 22, 1654, more thantwo weeks ahead of therefugees from Brazil.

Questions of priority inhistory are not especiallyenlightening, and it is notnecessary to belabor the pointthat Barsimon, Pietersen, andLevy established themselves inNew Amsterdam before theTwenty-Three. What is impor-tant, however, is to recognizethat these individuals wereseparate from the Brazilianrefugees. In acknowledgingthis fact we can see that thetwo groups had very differentreasons for being in thecolony—the former came ontheir own accord and deliber-ately to New Amsterdam toengage in commercial oppor-tunities, while the latterarrived somewhat involuntari-ly after a long and circuitousjourney in which they proba-bly had originally intended togo to the Netherlands, not itssmall, struggling outpost inNorth America. Indeed, theSephardim of Brazil had strongreligious, family, and econom-ic ties with Amsterdam, whilenone of these aspects existedfor them in New Amsterdam.Indeed, for the Twenty-Three,North America was not neces-sarily the Promised Land.

Thus, the issue of intentbecomes crucial in under-standing New Amsterdam’sinitial Jewish inhabitants. Thefact is, we know very littleabout the twenty-threeSephardic refugees, who wereamong the last Jews to fleeRecife following the fall ofDutch Brazil. We are not evencertain of their names. We doknow, however, that theyarrived in New Amsterdam

indebted to the ship’s captainfor their passage. Yet, the factthat they waited so long toleave Brazil suggests that thePortuguese-Brazilian rebellionhad already left these Jewsimpoverished and unable topay the West India Companythe departure fees required ofall settlers leaving theircolony. This is an essentialpoint. Rather than comprisinga cohesive group determinedto reestablish a Jewish com-munity elsewhere in the DutchAtlantic, the Twenty-Threewere most likely a diversegroup of families—the rem-nants of a once thrivingpopulation—united only intheir poverty and desire toavoid Portuguese rule.

There is nothing in theevidence to suggest that, likeBarsimon, Pietersen, and Levy,who came to New Amsterdamindividually to engage intrade, the Twenty-Three werealso anything other than a col-lection of individual families.Throughout the Sephardicdiaspora, synagogue member-ship defined communitybelonging. This was the case inAmsterdam, the center of sev-enteenth-century WesternEuropean Jewry, where asmany as three thousand Por-tuguese Jews lived, as well asin Recife, which at its heightcounted over one thousandJewish inhabitants. While weknow the Jewish refugees wereprivately worshipping with aTorah in their homes in NewAmsterdam, an actual syna-gogue did not develop,notwithstanding CongregationShearith Israel’s—New York’soldest congregation—claim of1654 as their year of origin. Itcould not, for the twenty-three refugees had nointention of staying in NewAmsterdam. They were notpioneers, but rather displacedpersons who preferred toreturn to Europe or theCaribbean. By 1663, the greenveiled Torah that had served

the Jewish inhabitants of NewAmsterdam since 1655 hadbeen returned to Amsterdam,apparently because a minyancould not be maintained in thecity. The following year, of theoriginal 1654 Jewish immi-grants, only Asser Levy and hisfamily appear to have beenpresent in the Dutch colonywhen it fell to English invaders.

History is often the storyof unintended actions andunplanned consequences, andthe story of the formation ofthe first American Jewish com-munity is one of contingencyand accident. This, of course,does not make it any less wor-thy of commemoration. Theunintended arrival of the Twen-ty-Three in New Amsterdam,along with the intended jour-ney of the three Ashkenazitraders, spurred an unprece-dented transatlantic lobbyingeffort between Amsterdam’sSephardic leadership and theDutch West India Company toensure Jews the rights to live,trade, and worship in NewNetherland. For a variety ofcomplex reasons and in spite oflocal opposition from Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, theCompany ruled in favor of theJews and established a policythat would make further immi-gration and the formation of areal Jewish community a possi-bility in New Netherland. Bythe beginning of the 18th cen-tury, after the colony hadpassed over to English rule,New York could indeed boast aJewish community of sometwenty families, as well as itsown synagogue. A recognitionof the community’s contingentbeginnings makes the story ofits subsequent success evenmore remarkable, and makes itscommemoration even morecompelling.

Noah Gelfand, is a Ph.D candidate in Atlantic Historyat New York University andserved as a Fellow at the Cen-ter for Jewish History in 2002.

First Community?continued from page 7

Ship arriving New Amsterdam, 1654.

Courtesy American Jewish

Historical Society

American Sephardi FederationRepresenting the Diverse Spectrum of Sephardic Jews in the United StatesFounded in 1973, the American Sephardi Federation promotes and

preserves the spiritual, historical, cultural, and social traditions of Sephardiccommunities. It created the only North American Library/Archives dedicatedsolely to the Sephardic experience and offers the only permanent Sephardicexhibition gallery.

13

of the Babylonian Talmud,which led to the survival offull sets of the early editionsof the Talmud, such as the“Wittenberg Copy” of theBomberg edition, the center-piece of the YUM exhibit.

It was in the modernperiod that the most seriouschallenges were posed to theauthority and centrality of theTalmud. These challenges cameabout as a result of the innerdynamic of Jewish moderniza-tion. Modernity brought in itswake the breakdown of tradi-tional Jewish life, the rise ofmodern Jewish religious move-ments and secularism, and thepolitical emancipation of Euro-pean Jews. The horrors of theHolocaust led to the destruc-tion of the great Europeancenters of Talmud study, andthe academies of the Islamicworld came to an end in theaftermath of the rise of theState of Israel and the expul-sion of the Jews from Arablands. These factors threat-ened to push the Talmud to themargins of Jewish life. But therenewed expansion of Yeshiv-ot, university Judaic Studiesprograms, and the varioustranslations and publicationprojects have brought about amiraculous revival of the roleof the Talmud as the ultimatetransmitter of Jewish law andlore—of the heritage of ancientIsrael in the modern world.

The significance of theYeshiva University Museumexhibit is to demonstrate pre-cisely this: the tenacity of thestudy and printing of thissacred text through the ages,even in the face of enormousdifficulties. One example of thefascinating material assembled

for this exhibit is our earliestpreserved evidence of Talmudictextual materials, the fifthcentury Rehov Inscription,found in the synagogue atancient Rehov, just 5 km.south of Beit Shean in north-ern Israel. This entireinscription has been broughtto the museum. It containsparallels to excerpts from Tal-mudic texts, showing that thetraditions later incorporatedinto the larger collectionsoriginally circulated independ-ently and that they served asguides for the people, hencetheir public display.

The name of the exhibitderives from the beautifulBomberg edition of the Baby-lonian Talmud, containingmostly first edition tractatesand some material from the

second and third—all printedby Daniel Bomberg between1522 and ca.1543. It was thisedition that permanently fixedthe page numbers and thearrangement of the commen-taries of Rashi and Tosafot.

As is on ample display inthe exhibit, on the Talmudicpage, the Mishnah and Talmudare surrounded by commen-

taries from the Middle Ages,and notes refer to the Bible,other Talmudic works, tomedieval codes, even occasion-ally to modern traditionalworks. This physical formintends to encourage a dialoguebetween texts and commen-taries, and between all of themand the student. The student isoften also in dialogue with achavruta, a traditional studypartner, and they and all thetexts participate in an ongoingdialogue between a world ofhumanity and a divine com-mand—the written Torah. Thisongoing, eternal dialogue—theRabbis taught that the Torahserved as the blueprint for cre-ation—is contained in thewords of the Talmud and in itsphysical form, and in study andin the life of ritual, ethics, theology, and law that it engen-ders. It is a dialogue thatcelebrates the capacity to sanc-tify acts and issues throughinquiry and debate.

So the Talmud is not justa book to study. It is anapproach to life, in whichinquiry and debate transformthe mundane into the holy.While halakhah certainly laysdown certain standards andrequirements representing boththe Torah’s law and the Rab-binic injunctions, inquiry aboutall of them, as well as determin-ing the application of most ofthem, became in Judaism aform of divine worship. TheTalmud in its widest sense isnot just knowledge, but it is the life of Torah. In fact, Talmudic study is turning anew corner in our own time.Most importantly, the Talmudis being restored to its centralposition in traditional Jewishculture, and with its moderntranslations, such as theSchottenstein edition, it is

A Talmudic Resurgencecontinued from page 5

being opened to untold num-bers of people to whom it waspreviously closed. The renewedattention on the Talmud canenergize the quest for Jewishcontinuity throughout theworld by showing that inessence, the study and prac-tice of the age-old traditions ofJudaism hold the keys to itsfuture. This is as it should be,for the Talmud has historicallyalways been the possession ofthe entire Jewish people, notjust of an elite or even of theRabbinic class. Indeed, YUM’sexhibit may be further testi-mony to that fact that we maynow be seeing the reestablish-ment of Talmudic study as thecenter of a Jewish communityengaged in the deepest explo-ration of its traditions.

Lawrence H. Schiffman is Edelman Professor of Hebrewand Judaic Studies at NewYork University and a memberof the Center’s Academic Advisory Council. This articleis adapted from his essay in the catalog of Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibit,“Printing the Talmud: FromBomberg to Schottenstein.”

Tractate Makkot Prague, 1716.

(Courtesy the Library of the Jewish

Theological Seminary of America)

Yeshiva University MuseumEducating Audiences of All Ages with Dynamic Interpretations of Jewish Life, Past and PresentFounded in 1973, Yeshiva University Museum celebrates the culturally diverse intellectual and artistic achievements of 3,000 years of Jewish experi-ence and offers a window onto Jewish culture around the world.

14

The Berlin HolocaustMemorial in the Contextof German Jewish History

On May 25, 2005, Carol Kahn Strauss, the executivedirector of the Leo Baeck Institute, was invited to speakat a dinner in the residence of the German embassy inWashington, DC, hosted by German ambassador Wolf-gang Ischinger in honor of the unveiling of theMemorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin.Below is an abridged version of that speech.

[T]o me, the Berlin memorial is a reflection of both the nobilityand the humility of Germany today. What other nation has sopublicly and meaningfully acknowledged a collective responsibil-ity for what is arguably the worst catastrophe to befall the Jewssince the destruction of the Temple? It is often a long time aftera cataclysmic event has taken place for the historical reality to beassimilated. Often it is recast and reshaped, usually into art,drama, fiction, or poetry. In this case, it is rendered instone…nameless, faceless, universal and particular.

And it is in the heart of Berlin, where European Jewry firstexperienced the opportunities and risks that came to be identi-fied with modernity in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was inGermany, and in Berlin in particular, that achievements in art andculture, science and medicine, business, commerce and the lawwere so noticeably developed by the nation’s Jewish citizens….

The uneasy association of German Jews interacting withother Germans was often trumped by the objective accomplish-ments of working together. Berlin became the world capital of the1920s: it became synonymous with cosmopolitanism, with quality,with innovation, and with Jews. Social interaction between Jewsand Germans was increasingly visible, especially in Berlin. One con-

sequence of this higher profilewas that Jews were attacked as“controlling”, “dominating”,and “radical.”

These attacks against theJews were not without effect.The excitement of the new andunlimited possibilities sug-gested by the spirit of the1920s quickly faded….[B]y thetime of the German election in1930, unemployment was ram-pant, and the economic slumpled to a national malaise thatfocused its discontent on liber-al attitudes, on democracy, andespecially on the Jews. Hitlersaw his opportunity and hetook it….

The edicts and restric-tions subsequently enactedagainst Jews meant that theGerman ranks of mathemati-cians, scientists, jurists,publishers, playwrights, musi-cians, artists and writers werediminished to the point wheremediocrity took over….TheNazi press rejoiced with thebanner headline: “Somethingwonderful has happened; theyhave gone.” Some Jews com-mitted suicide, many werekilled, but most emigrated,mainly to the United States.

As three successive gen-erations of Germans copedwith the mass murder andforced exodus of the best andbrightest in virtually everyfield of human endeavor, thequestion became, How to commemorate this unprecedentedcatastrophe?….

The author James Young, the only foreigner and the onlyJew to serve on Germany’s commission to select a design for anational Holocaust memorial, has written several books on thedilemmas Germany faces when it attempts to formalize the self-inflicted void in its midst—the void of its lost and murderedJews. For Germans, this void has come to define part of thenational identity.

Yet, as far as I can tell, for German Jews, that is actually notthe case; for them, the Holocaust does not define Germany. Theyears of debate, discussion, controversy and conflict that ragedthroughout Germany over the actual and symbolic form a memo-rial for the murdered Jews of Europe should take were not echoedin German-Jewish communities in America or elsewhere. In Ger-many the debate itself was clearly part of the process of facinghistory. But for the aging survivors and their families settled forthree generations (mostly) in the United States, the culture ofremembrance is different. For them…the only consideration was

Leo Beack Institute

Founded in 1955,the Leo Baeck Insti-tute is the single

most important source fordocumenting the vibrantlife of German-speakingJewry, covering hundredsof years prior to the Holocaust, the years of the Third Reich, as well asthe postwar resurgence ofa Jewish community inGermany.

To mark the occasionof Leo Baeck Institute’s50th anniversary, LBI ispresenting an exhibitionrecognizing the achieve-ments and contributions ofGerman Jews who immi-grated to America.

“Starting Over: TheExperience of German Jewsin America, 1830-1945,” onview through November 15,2005, explores the impor-tant role that GermanJewish immigrants playedin the shaping of Americanculture and professionallife. Many of the 150objects and documents featured in the exhibit—photographs, letters,sketches, maps, medals,and other rare artifacts—are on display for the first time.

Photo courtesy of Eisenman Architects

that Nazi crimes against the Jews must never beforgotten.

While it may be different for East Euro-peans, it seems that for German Jews, the firstassociation is “Heimat”: recollections of child-hood, family, and school-friends. Pleasantmemories persist. Unlike many American Jewswho are reluctant to visit Germany, many Ger-man Jews are eager to revisit their towns andcities. They point with pride to the contribu-tions and accomplishments of their forebears,including fighting for the fatherland in the FirstWorld War, service in communal organizations,involvement in commerce and in culture, andthe establishment of department stores, news-papers and orchestras that continue to this day.I have rarely heard German Jews refer to them-selves as victims.

But of course they were, and more thanonce in their long and illustrious history in Ger-many, from settling along the Rhine 2,000 yearsago to the rightwing extremists active today.Indeed, alongside material that attests to theremarkable contributions of Jews in Germany,the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute are over-flowing with documents that confirm thecenturies-old existence of anti-Semitism. Still, Iwould say that in the context of German Jewishhistory, this important new monument in Berlinis a necessary marker but not a definitive one.It is an undeniable and inescapable part of abigger and much less negative picture…

As the director of the Leo Baeck Institutein New York I am always quick to emphasizethat the Institute is a research library andarchive and not a religious organization….Andyet, when I saw the plans of Mr. [Peter] Eisen-man’s extraordinary design, and then its actualinstallation when I was in Berlin for its inaugu-ration, I could not help but remember a prayerfrom the old Reform Hebrew Union prayer book,that reads, in part, “We would not close oureyes to the evils that beset our path but strug-gle… to turn them into steppingstones, leading

upward…”The rebirth of a Jewish community in Ger-

many, which Leo Baeck praised on his firstpostwar visit to Germany in 1949, seems to con-firm that Germany has still not lost its appealfor Jews seeking to make better lives for them-selves, offering many of the same risks andopportunities that attracted them to Berlin acentury ago. The memorial, I think, is essential:“We would not close our eyes to the evils thatbeset our path.” But our tradition also teachesus that the forces of destruction do not defineus for all time. Our tradition is to remember, andto move on. Rabbi Leo Baeck was among thefirst to recognize the potential for dialogue andreconciliation between Jews and Germany, justafter the Holocaust, after what he called “theillusion of assimilation ” was over.

In a very moving talk at the White Housemore than 20 years ago Elie Wiesel said that he had learned that suffering confers noprivileges; rather, it confers obligations.“Survivors,” Wiesel said, “have tried to teachtheir contemporaries how to build on ruins,how to invent hope in a world that offers none, how to proclaim faith to a generationthat has seen it shamed and mutilated. And I believe that memory is the answer, perhapsthe only answer.”

Leo Baeck Institute exists to capture thehistorical memory, to catalogue the legacy ofthe German-Jewish experience that can be doc-umented on paper, on film, on canvas. TheBerlin memorial captures the private memorythat is in the heart of each and every humanbeing who has suffered, and who has used thatsuffering…to move forward with courage andstrength. For all those generations who willgrow up without personal memory of the Holo-caust, this memorial is absolutely necessary. Itis a reminder of the irreparable loss Germanyinflicted upon itself by destroying its Jewishminority, which, in the context of our sharedhistory, played such a vital and vibrant role.

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Examples abound. AllenGinsberg ripped open the bodyof poetry and rearranged itsorgans, writing verse thatsounded more like a howl thanlike a pleasant, rhythmic song.Lenny Bruce made the obscenelook mundane and the mundaneseem enraging by trivializingdirty words while awakeningsleeping societal notions such asracism and hypocrisy. Even aman of action like Vladeck hadan intricate connection to lan-guage: More than teaching theworkers how to march or strike,Vladeck—who was also a jour-nalist, an editor, and the generalmanager of the Yiddish newspa-per Forward—taught them how to speak, tore from theirtongues the tepid language ofcontracts and wages andimplanted in them a vocabularythat concerned itself with big-ger, bolder issues such as thequality of life, social justice, andeconomic parity.

Editing, then, both pre-serves and transforms. Itconjures up a portrait of a Jew-ish community, immigrants andnative sons alike, who soughtapproval on the one hand andupheaval on the other, whounderstood the good and thebad about America, who usedtheir language to edit the col-lective American narrative.

Liel Leibovitz is a journalist living in New York City.

Editing Americacontinued from page 4

The Lillian Goldman Reading Roomver 4,000 visits are made to the exquisite and accommodating Reading Roomannually — scholars, academics, writers, as well as the general public make

use of the extraordinary resources available, representing nearly fifty countries inparts of the world as far reaching as South Africa, Singapore, Estonia, Argentina andIsrael. Hours: Monday–Thursday, 9:30 am–5:15 pm. Friday, by appointment only. For information on the Center’s Graduate Seminars for academic audiences, you cancontact Diane Spielmann, Director, at dspielmann@cjh.org.

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Left side: (A) C. Virginia Fields,

Manhattan Borough President, and

Bruce Slovin, Chairman

(B) Stephen and Sherry Jacobs,

Joseph S. Steinberg (C) Michael

Fragin, Executive Assistant to

Governor George E. Pataki;

Carol Philippi; Jonathan Greenspun, Commissioner New York City

Community Assistance; Michael Glickman; Tarky Lombardi,

New York State Senator (retired)

Right side: (D) Sylvia A. Herskowitz, Executive Director of Yeshiva

University, and Joseph D. Becker, a member of the Board of Overseers

(E) Emanuel and Ria Gruss with Peter A. Geffen, Executive Director

of the Center (F) Sandra Rubin, Director of Development, with

Joseph and Marilyn Schwartz

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Development NewsThe Center for Jewish History thanks the many individuals, foundations, and government agencies whose generosi-ty is essential to the growth of its dynamic programs. (A list of donors of $10,000 or more appears on pages 18–19.)Here we highlight some of the new grants, programs, and recent developments at the Center, made possible by thesupport of institutional and individual supporters of the Center’s five partners.

Gala DinnerOn December 15, 2004, over two hundred guests were treated to a memorable evening in celebra-tion of the 350th anniversary of Jewish settlement in North America at the Center for Jewish

History’s Third Annual Board of Overseers and Board of DirectorsDinner. With Chairman of the Board Bruce Slovin and his wife,Francesca Slovin, leading a Dinner Committee consisting ofKaren and William Ackman, Tracey and Bruce Berkowitz, Dianeand Joseph Steinberg, Edward L. Steinberg, and Michele CohnTocci, the event raised more than $825,000 in support of theCenter’s work.

The event began with a cocktail reception on the Selma L.Batkin Mezzanine where a variety of Jewish-American horsd’oeuvres were served, in keeping with the theme of the evening.Guests had an opportunity to participate in a guided tour of theCenter, which included a visit to the Lillian Goldman ReadingRoom, the Werner J. and Gisella Levy Cahnman Preservation Lab-oratory, the Center’s Genealogy Institute, and the Strashun RareBook Room, home of YIVO’s rare book collection.

Guests were then invited into the Leo and Julia ForchheimerAuditorium where they were entertained by the Rafi Malkiel Quin-tet, which performed the songs of Jewish-American composers,including Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin and George Gershwin.Jewish comedian Joel Chasnoff kept everyone laughing as theevening’s Master of Ceremonies. Following the entertainment,guests enjoyed a candlelit dinner “From the Jewish-AmericanKitchen” in the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Great Hall.

CJH Welcomes Sandra Rubin as Director of DevelopmentThe Center for Jewish History has benefited from almost two years of development consulting services from Sandra Rubin, who hasplayed a critical role in securing several major gifts for the Center. Sandi is a highly experienced fund-raiser and a remarkably accom-plished professional. She served for many years as the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Foundation. This past January, the Centerannounced that Sandi would assume the full-time responsibilities of Director of Development. With Sandi now leading our Develop-ment Department, the Center will undoubtedly have much continued success during the months and years ahead in securing thenecessary funding to sustain the Center’s operations and to expand and enhance its offerings to the public.

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Gruss Lipper Digital LabThe Center for Jewish History and its partners have longviewed the widespread digitization of their respective archivalcollections as a means both of preserving these invaluable andirreplaceable materials and providing more widespread accessto them by stu-dents, scholarsand the generalpublic. The Cen-

ter for Jewish History’s partners have all undertaken digitiza-tion projects individually, either doing limited digitization in-house or outsourcing larger projects.

Thanks to a generous grant of $792,501 from the GrussLipper Family Foundation, the Center for Jewish History is nowconstructing an on-site digital laboratory that will serve allthe partners’ digitization needs in a professional and timelymanner. The grant will provide for the preparation of the dig-ital lab space, the provision of necessary equipment, andstaffing for the first two years of the lab’s operations. Theadvanced equipment used in the lab by its highly specializedstaff will allow for a wide range of digitization projects, includ-ing films, music, and three-dimensional objects. All digitizedimages will be archived with bibliographic references on theCenter for Jewish History’s new On-line Public Access Catalog,a vast electronic database of the partners’ collections accessi-ble from any computer terminal with Internet access.

Construction of the Gruss Lipper Digital Lab has alreadybegun. The space chosen is currently being retrofitted withenvironmental controls to provide the proper temperature andhumidity necessary to protect the documents or objects beingpending digitization. As always, the Center for Jewish History’spriority is to ensure that these extraordinary material traces ofthe past five hundred years of Jewish history are preserved forthe future, while allowing them to be accessible to those whomight learn from them. The Gruss Lipper Digital Lab will sure-ly become an essential resource to scholarship worldwide .

The Center’s Board of Overseers WelcomesTwo New MembersThe Center is very pleased to announce that Tracey Berkowitzand Fred S. Zeidman have agreed tojoin its Board of Overseers. This Boardwas established nearly three yearsago, and its purpose is to advise andassist the Board of Directors in thedevelopment and fulfillment of theCenter’s mission. It now comprisestwenty-seven distinguished leaderswith expertise in business, finance,law, medicine, philanthropy andscholarship.

Tracey Berkowitz received herundergraduate degree from the Uni-versity of Massachusetts, where shestudied marketing. She has worked instrategic market planning in Englandand the United States. Ms. Berkowitzresides in New Jersey with her hus-band, Bruce, and their three children.

Fred S. Zeidman received his B.S. in Business Administration fromWashington University and his M.B.A.from New York University. He current-ly lives in Houston, Texas, where he isinvolved with educational and civicorganizations. Other posts include:Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memo-rial Council in Washington, D.C.; National Board Member, StateIsrael Bonds; and Director of the American Jewish Committee.

We look forward to the meaningful and lasting contributionsour newest Overseers will make to the Center for Jewish History.

Congressional AppropriationsThe United States Congress made two appropriations to the Center for Jewish History. The first, of $500,000, will enable theCenter to continue to enhance its in-house preservation laboratory and digitization program on behalf of the partners.The funds will be used to support the physical treatment ofbooks and documents, microfilming and cataloguing collections,digitization of collections, and to expand the gathering and doc-umentation of historical collections for web-based projects andprograms. The second appropriation, of $100,000, will be useddirectly to support the educational activities and initiatives ofthe Center’s partners.

The Center is grateful for the continued support of UnitedStates Senators Charles E. Schumer, Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY),and Arlen Specter (PA), and United States Representatives Jer-rold Nadler, Nita Lowey, and Carolyn B. Maloney.

Tracey Berkowitz

Fred S. Zeidman

Citizenship certificate for Henry Sohn,

February 12, 1878. (LBI) This document

was restored by the Center's Cahman

Preservation Lab and has been digitized

and archived with bibliographic reference on

the new Online Public Access Catalog.

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THE DAVID BERG FOUNDATION

BIALKIN FAMILY FOUNDATION— ANN AND KENNETH J. BIALKIN

GEORGE BLUMENTHAL

ABRAHAM AND RACHEL BORNSTEIN

LILI AND JON BOSSE

LOTTE AND LUDWIG BRAVMANN

THE ELI AND EDYTHE L. BROAD FOUNDATION

THE CAHNMAN FOUNDATION

CONFERENCE ON JEWISH MATERIAL CLAIMS

AGAINST GERMANY—RABBI ISRAEL

MILLER FUND FOR SHOAH RESEARCH,DOCUMENTATION AND EDUCATION

THE CONSTANTINER FAMILY

MR. AND MRS. J. MORTON DAVIS

DONALDSON, LUFKIN & JENRETTE

MICHAEL AND KIRK DOUGLAS

THE DAVID GEFFEN FOUNDATION

GEORGICA ADVISORS LLCWILLIAM B. GINSBERG

NATHAN AND LOUISE GOLDSMITH FOUNDATION

JACK B. GRUBMAN

FANYA GOTTESFELD HELLER

SUSAN AND ROGER HERTOG

INSTITUTE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SERVICES

JOAN L. JACOBSON

MR. AND MRS. PAUL KAGAN

LEAH AND MICHAEL KARFUNKEL

SIMA AND NATHAN KATZ AND FAMILY

BARCLAY KNAPP

MR. AND MRS. HENRY R. KRAVIS

CONSTANCE AND HARVEY KRUEGER

SIDNEY AND RUTH LAPIDUS

MR. AND MRS. THOMAS H. LEE

LEON LEVY

GEORGE L. LINDEMANN

THE MARCUS FOUNDATION

MARK FAMILY FOUNDATION

CRAIG AND SUSAN MCCAW FOUNDATION

LEO AND BETTY MELAMED

EDWARD AND SANDRA MEYER FOUNDATION

DEL AND BEATRICE P. MINTZ FAMILY

CHARITABLE FOUNDATION

RUTH AND THEODORE N. MIRVIS

NEW YORK STATE—SENATOR ROY M. GOODMAN

NUSACH VILNE, INC.SUSAN AND ALAN PATRICOF

ANNE AND MARTY PERETZ

CAROL F. AND JOSEPH H. REICH

JUDITH AND BURTON P. RESNICK

THE MARC RICH FOUNDATION

RIGHTEOUS PERSONS FOUNDATION— STEVEN SPIELBERG

STEPHEN ROSENBERG—GREYSTONE & CO.LOUISE AND GABRIEL ROSENFELD, HARRIET

AND STEVEN PASSERMAN

DR. AND MRS. LINDSAY A. ROSENWALD

THE MORRIS AND ALMA SCHAPIRO FUND

S. H. AND HELEN R. SCHEUER FAMILY

FOUNDATION

FREDERIC M. SEEGAL

THE SELZ FOUNDATION

THE SHELDON H. SOLOW FOUNDATION

DAVID AND CINDY STONE—FREEDMAN & STONE LAW FIRM

ROBYNN N. AND ROBERT M. SUSSMAN

HELENE AND MORRIS TALANSKY

WACHTELL, LIPTON, ROSEN & KATZ

DR. SAMUEL D. WAKSAL

FRANCES AND LAURENCE A. WEINSTEIN

GENEVIEVE AND JUSTIN WYNER

BARBARA AND ROY J. ZUCKERBERG

BUILDERSJOSEPH ALEXANDER FOUNDATION

DWAYNE O. ANDREAS— ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND FOUNDATION

ANONYMOUS

BEATE AND JOSEPH D. BECKER

ANTHONY S. BELINKOFF

HALINA AND SAMSON BITENSKY

ANA AND IVAN BOESKY

CITIBANK

ROSALIND DEVON

VALERIE AND CHARLES DIKER

ERNST & YOUNG LLPMR. AND MRS. BARRY FEIRSTEIN

RICHARD AND RHODA GOLDMAN FUND

ARNOLD AND ARLENE GOLDSTEIN

JOHN W. JORDAN

THE SIDNEY KIMMEL FOUNDATION

GERALD AND MONA LEVINE

THE LIMAN FOUNDATION

MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC.LOIS AND RICHARD MILLER

ARLEEN AND ROBERT S. RIFKIND

MRS. FREDERICK P. ROSE

MAY AND SAMUEL RUDIN FAMILY

FOUNDATION, INC.SAVE AMERICA'S TREASURES

I. B. SPITZ

SHARON AND FRED STEIN

JUDY AND MICHAEL STEINHARDT

JANE AND STUART WEITZMAN

DAPHNA AND RICHARD ZIMAN

GUARDIANSMR. AND MRS. SAMUEL AARONS

MR. AND MRS. MERV ADELSON

ARTHUR S. AINSBERG

MARJORIE AND NORMAN E. ALEXANDER

ANONYMOUS

MARCIA AND EUGENE APPLEBAUM

BANK OF AMERICA

SANFORD L. BATKIN

BEAR, STEARNS & CO., INC.VIVIAN AND NORMAN BELMONTE

JACK AND MARILYN BELZ

THE BENDHEIM FOUNDATION

MEYER BERMAN FOUNDATION

BEYER BLINDER BELLE

THE BLOOMFIELD FAMILY

BOGATIN FAMILY FOUNDATION

RALPH H. BOOTH IIBOVIS LEND LEASE LMB, INC.DASSA AND BRILL—MARLENE BRILL

ETHEL BRODSKY

CALIFORNIA FEDERAL BANK

CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK

PATRICIA AND JAMES CAYNE

CENTER SHEET METAL, INC.—VICTOR GANY

CHASE MANHATTAN CORPORATION

CAREN AND ARTURO CONSTANTINER

CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON

THE NATHAN CUMMINGS FOUNDATION

ELLA CWIK-LIDSKY

IDE AND DAVID DANGOOR

ESTHER AND ROBERT DAVIDOFF

ANTHONY DEFELICE—WILLIS

THE PHILIP DEVON FAMILY FOUNDATION

BERNICE AND DONALD DRAPKIN

E. M. WARBURG, PINCUS & CO., LLCHENRY, KAMRAN AND FREDERICK ELGHANAYAN

MARTIN I. ELIAS

GAIL AND ALFRED ENGELBERG

CLAIRE AND JOSEPH H. FLOM

FOREST ELECTRIC CORPORATION

MICHAEL FUCHS

DAVID GERBER AND CAROLYN KORSMEYER

ROBERT T. AND LINDA W. GOAD

GOLDMAN, SACHS & CO.REBECCA AND LAURENCE GRAFSTEIN

EUGENE AND EMILY GRANT FAMILY

FOUNDATION

CLIFF GREENBERG

EMANUEL GRUSS

LORELEI AND BENJAMIN HAMMERMAN

JAMES HARMON

ELLEN AND DAVID S. HIRSCH

ADA AND JIM HORWICH

HSBC BANK USAPAUL T. JONES IIGERSHON KEKST

KLEINHANDLER CORPORATION

KNIGHT TRADING GROUP, INC.JANET AND JOHN KORNREICH

KPMG LLPHILARY BALLON AND ORIN KRAMER

LAQUILA CONSTRUCTION

THE FAMILY OF LOLLY AND JULIAN LAVITT

LEHMAN BROTHERS

EILEEN AND PETER M. LEHRER

DENNIS LEIBOWITZ

ABBY AND MITCH LEIGH FOUNDATION

LIBERTY MARBLE, INC.KENNETH AND EVELYN LIPPER FOUNDATION

MACKENZIE PARTNERS, INC.BERNARD L. AND RUTH MADOFF FOUNDATION

SALLY AND ABE MAGID

JOSEPH MALEH

LAUREL AND JOEL MARCUS

MR. AND MRS. PETER W. MAY

THE MAYROCK FOUNDATION

DRS. ERNEST AND ERIKA MICHAEL

ABBY AND HOWARD MILSTEIN

MORGAN STANLEY & CO.AGAHAJAN NASSIMI AND FAMILY

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

THE FAMILY OF EUGENE AND MURIEL

AND MAYER D. NELSON

THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY

BERNARD AND TOBY NUSSBAUM

FRITZI AND HERBERT H. OWENS

PAUL, WEISS, RIFKIND, WHARTON & GARRISON

DORIS L. AND MARTIN D. PAYSON

ARTHUR AND MARILYN PENN

CHARITABLE TRUST

MR. AND MRS. NORMAN H. PESSIN

PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES INC.DAVID AND CINDY PINTER

ROSA AND DAVID POLEN

NANCY AND MARTIN POLEVOY

YVONNE AND LESLIE POLLACK FAMILY

FOUNDATION

GERI AND LESTER POLLACK

FANNY PORTNOY

PUMPKIN TRUST—CAROL F. REICH

BESSY L. PUPKO

R & J CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION

ANNA AND MARTIN J. RABINOWITZ

JAMES AND SUSAN RATNER

PHILANTHROPIC FUND

ANITA AND YALE ROE

THE FAMILY OF EDWARD AND

DORIS ROSENTHAL

JACK AND ELIZABETH ROSENTHAL

SHAREN NANCY ROZEN

THE HARVEY AND PHYLLIS SANDLER

FOUNDATION

CAROL AND LAWRENCE SAPER

FOUNDERSS. DANIEL ABRAHAM,

DR. EDWARD L. STEINBERG— HEALTHY FOODS OF AMERICA, LLC

ANONYMOUS

ANTIQUA FOUNDATION

EMILY AND LEN BLAVATNIK

ESTATE OF SOPHIE BOOKHALTER, M.D.BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN—

C. VIRGINIA FIELDS, MANHATTAN

BOROUGH PRESIDENT

LEO AND JULIA FORCHHEIMER FOUNDATION

LILLIAN GOLDMAN CHARITABLE TRUST

HORACE W. GOLDSMITH FOUNDATION

KATHERINE AND CLIFFORD H. GOLDSMITH

THE JESSELSON FAMILY

THE KRESGE FOUNDATION

RONALD S. LAUDER

BARBARA AND IRA A. LIPMAN AND SONS

NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL— GIFFORD MILLER, SPEAKER

NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL

AFFAIRS

NEW YORK STATE—GOVERNOR GEORGE E. PATAKI

NEW YORK STATE— ASSEMBLY SPEAKER SHELDON SILVER

NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT,LIBRARY AID PROGRAM

RONALD O. PERELMAN

BETTY AND WALTER L. POPPER

RELIANCE GROUP HOLDINGS, INC.INGEBORG AND IRA LEON RENNERT—

THE KEREN RUTH FOUNDATION

ANN AND MARCUS ROSENBERG

THE SLOVIN FAMILY

THE SMART FAMILY FOUNDATION

JOSEPH S. AND DIANE H. STEINBERG

THE WINNICK FAMILY FOUNDATION

SPONSORSSTANLEY I. BATKIN

JOAN AND JOSEPH F. CULLMAN3RD

DIANE AND MARK GOLDMAN

THE GOTTESMAN FUND

GRUSS-LIPPER FOUNDATION

THE SAMBERG FAMILY FOUNDATION

THE SKIRBALL FOUNDATION

TISCH FOUNDATION

THEODORE AND RENEE WEILER FOUNDATION

PATRONSWILLIAM AND KAREN ACKMAN

ANONYMOUS

JUDY AND RONALD BARON

JAYNE AND HARVEY BEKER

ROBERT M. BEREN FOUNDATION

Sharing Our CommitmentThe Center for Jewish History expresses its gratitude and deepappreciation to the following donors of $10,000 or more, whosegifts will help further its mission to preserve the Jewish past,protect the present, and secure the future. This roster repre-sents individuals, foundations, corporations, and governmentagencies that have generously contributed to our efforts.

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Center for Jewish History

EXHIBITION HOURS THROUGH SEPT. 15

Monday 11am–7pm

Tuesday–Thursday 11am–5pm

Friday 11am–3pm

Sunday 11am–5pm* For evening programs contact: 917-606-8200

PARTNERS

American Jewish Historical Society(AJHS)www.ajhs.org 212-294-6160

American Sephardi Federation (ASF)www.asfonline.org 212-294-8350

Leo Baeck Institute (LBI)www.lbi.org 212-744-6400

Yeshiva University Museum (YUM)www.yumuseum.org 212-294-8330

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research(YIVO)www.yivoinstitute.org 212-246-6080

LILLIAN GOLDMAN READING ROOM

Monday–Thursday 9:30am–5:15pm

Friday By appointment only

CONSTANTINER DATE PALM CAFÉ

Monday 11am–7pm

Tuesday–Thursday 11am–4pm

Sunday 11am–4pm

FANYA GOTTESFELD HELLER BOOKSTORE

Monday 11am–7pm

Tuesday–Thursday 11am–6pm

Friday 11am–3pm

Sunday 11am–5pm

(Also open on select evenings; call 917-606-8220.)

GENERAL TELEPHONE NUMBERS

Box Office 917-606-8200

Reading Room 917-606-8217

Genealogy Institute 212-294-8324

General Information 212-294-8301

Group Tours 917-606-8226

AFFILIATES

American Society for Jewish Music212-294-8328

Association for Jewish Studies917-606-8249

Austrian Heritage 212-294-8409

Centro Culturale Primo Levi917-606-8202

Gomez Mill House 212-294-8329

Jewish Genealogical Society of New York212-294-8326

Yemenite Jewish Federation of America 212-294-8327

(all facilities closed Saturdays)

ALLYNE AND FRED SCHWARTZ

IRENE AND BERNARD SCHWARTZ

JOSEPH E. SEAGRAM & SONS, INC.ALFRED AND HANINA SHASHA

ELLEN AND ROBERT SHASHA

SIMPSON THACHER & BARTLETT

SKADDEN, ARPS, SLATE, MEAGHER & FLOM LLC

ALAN B. SLIFKA FOUNDATION

SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA

JERRY I. SPEYER/KATHERINE G. FARLEY

THE SAM SPIEGEL FOUNDATION

MEI AND RONALD STANTON

ANITA AND STUART SUBOTNICK

LYNN AND SY SYMS

LYNNE AND MICKEY TARNOPOL

THOMAS WEISEL PARTNERS

ALICE M. AND THOMAS J. TISCH

TRIARC COMPANIES— NELSON PELTZ AND PETER MAY

SIMA AND RUBIN WAGNER

CLAUDIA AND WILLIAM WALTERS

WEIL, GOTSHAL & MANGES

PETER A. WEINBERG

ERNST AND PUTTI WIMPFHEIMER— ERNA STIEBEL MEMORIAL FUND

DALE AND RAFAEL ZAKLAD

FRED S. ZEIDMAN

HOPE AND SIMON ZIFF

THE ZISES FAMILY

LIST COMPLETE AS OF MARCH 30, 2005

The Constantiner Date Palm CaféLight fare, offered at moderate prices in an intimate, quiet setting

All products and food are glatt kosher and produced under the supervision of Foremost Caterers. For group reservations and to inquire about catering services, kindly call 917-606-8210.

Fanya Gottesfeld Heller BookstoreVisit the Center’s bookstore with its rich offerings of scholarly and contemporary books, jewelry, andobjects on Jewish history, culture, and language. Select books on American Jewish history on sale tocoincide with the exhibition, “Greetings from Home: 350 years of American Jewish Life.” Open selectevenings, please call in advance.

Become a Friend of the CenterSupport the Center for Jewish History with a gift of $36 or more, and you will become a Friend of theCenter and be eligible for the following benefits:

• Take advantage of a 10% discount at the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller bookstore.

• Enjoy a 10% discount in the Constantiner Date Palm Café.

• Receive a 15% discount on the price of your ticket for Center-sponsored events, films, concerts, and lectures.

For information on Planned Giving and Bequests, contact the Development Office, 212-294-8312, or e-mailsrubin@cjh.org.

COVER: Background: Seltzer bottles, New York, early 20th century. From left to right: Save Ethiopian Jewry button appearing on an American Association

for Ethiopian Jews poster, Graenum Berger Papers, American Jewish Historical Society; Judah Touro (1775-1854); J.B. Lightman, Knish Man, New York, 1933,

Graduate School for Jewish Social Work Records; Invitation to Purim Association Fancy Dress Ball, March 15, 1881, Rosalie Solomon Phillips Collection,

Phillips Family Papers, 1733-1954.

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Nonprofit Org.US Postage

PAIDNew York, NY

Permit #04568

Visit www.jewsinamerica.org

Upcoming HighlightsNOW ON VIEW: Visit www.cjh.org for a complete schedule, admission fees, starting times.

Exhibitions

● “Greetings from Home: 350 Years of American Jewish Life” (AJHS). Through Sept. 15.● “Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg To Schottenstein” (YUM). Through Aug. 28.● “Starting Over: The Experience of German Jews in America, 1830–1945” (LBI). Through Nov. 15.● “YIVO at 80: A Brief Encounter with Archives” (YIVO). Through Sept. 15.

Films

● “Editing America”—the Monday Night Film Series celebrates 20th-century cultural icons appearing in award-winning films—Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Allen Ginsberg, Dorothy Parker, and the Fleischer Brothers (creators of Popeye and Betty Boop), among many others. Through Sept. 19.

Other Events

● “Soldiers and Slaves: American POW’s trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble.” A lecture with author and New York Times correspondent Roger Cohen (co-sponsored with LBI and the American Council on Germany). June 29.

● “An Evening of Live Jewish Rock: Music with the Blue Fringe Band” (YUM). July 20.

● YIVO honors Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter for his lifetime achievement at a book launch celebrating the publication of Plant Names in Yiddish. July 24.

Visit publicrelations@cjh.org for videoconferencing of events.

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15 West 16th Street · New York, NY 10011