Western Jewish History Center

Last updated

The Western Jewish History Center existed as part of the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California, from 1967 to 2010. It is now the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, administered as part of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Primary source materials, consisting of more than 500 archival collections, include the papers and artifacts of Jewish families and individuals such as Judah L. Magnes; Adolph Sutro; David and Simon Lubin; Rosalie Meyer Stern; Julius Kahn; Florence Prag; Flora Arnstein; Ernest Bloch; Lloyd Dinkelspiel; Robert Levinson; Harris Weinstock; Ruth Carol Silver; Benjamin Swig; Rhoda and Richard Goldman; Alfred Henry Jacobs; members of the Haas, Koshland, Gerstle, Sloss, and Lilienthal families; and many others. Many of these take the form of family letters, diaries, photographs, and scrapbooks.

In addition, the archive also holds the papers and artifacts of important Jewish organizations such as San Francisco's Emanu-El, Beth Israel-Judea, Sherith Israel, and Ohabai Shalome synagogues; Oakland's Congregation Sinai; Berkeley's Aquarian Minyan, and Lafayette's Isaiah.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernest Bloch</span> Swiss-born American composer (1880–1959)

Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing musical scores, Bloch had an academic career that culminated in his recognition as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley in 1952.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Prag Kahn</span> American politician (1866–1948)

Florence Kahn was an American teacher and politician who in 1925 became the first Jewish woman to serve in the United States Congress. She was only the fifth woman to serve in Congress, and the second from California, after fellow San Franciscan Mae Nolan. Like Nolan, she took the seat in the House of Representatives left vacant by the death of her husband, Julius Kahn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life</span> Art museum, Jewish Heritage Museum in Berkeley, CA

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, formerly known as the Judah L. Magnes Museum from 1961 until its reopening in 2012, is a museum of Jewish history, art, and culture in Berkeley, California. The museum, which was founded in 1961 by Seymour and Rebecca Fromer, is named for Jewish activist Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, a native of Oakland and co-founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life houses more than 30,000 Jewish artifacts and manuscripts, which is the third largest collection of its kind in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lubin</span>

David Lubin was a merchant and agriculturalist. He was pivotal in founding the International Institute of Agriculture in 1908, in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judah Leon Magnes</span> Jewish rabbi (1877-1948)

Judah Leon Magnes was a prominent Reform rabbi in both the United States and Mandatory Palestine. He is best remembered as a leader in the pacifist movement of the World War I period, his advocacy of a binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine, and as one of the most widely recognized voices of 20th century American Reform Judaism. Magnes served as the first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1925), and later as its President (1935–1948).

The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) was founded in 1892 with the mission to foster awareness and appreciation of American Jewish history and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation and dissemination of materials relating to American Jewish history.

Moses Rischin (1925-2020) was an American historian, author, lecturer, editor, and emeritus professor of history at San Francisco State University. He coined the phrase new Mormon history in a 1969 article of the same name.

Congregation Beth Israel is a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Berkeley, California, in the United States. Established in 1924 as the Berkeley Hebrew Center, it traces its origins to the First Hebrew Congregation of Berkeley, founded in 1909. It was Berkeley's first synagogue and remains its oldest. Lay-led for four decades, it hired its first rabbi, Saul Berman, in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mayer Kirshenblatt</span> Polish-born Canadian painter and author of Jewish origin

Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916–2009) was a Polish-born Canadian self-taught painter and author of Jewish origin.

Seymour Fromer was an American co-founder of the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California. Fromer co-founded the museum, which houses 11,000 Jewish artifacts, one of the largest collections in the United States, with his wife, Rebecca Fromer, in a Berkeley mansion in 1962. He remained the director the Judah L. Magnes Museum until his retirement in 1998.

Joseph Asher (1921–1990) was an American rabbi born in Germany, known for his advocacy of reconciliation between the Jews and the Germans in the post-Holocaust era, and for his support for the civil rights movement in the United States. He was senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco for 19 years.

Ira Nowinski is a photographer. Nowinski earned a Master of Fine Art's degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1973. From the late 1970s through the early 1980s, Nowinski served as the official photographer of the San Francisco Opera. His photographs have been collected extensively by the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library; Stanford University Libraries' Department of Special Collections; Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Museum of Photography, Bradford, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Rosenbaum</span> American historian

Fred Rosenbaum is an American author, historian and adult educator, specializing in the history of the Jewish community of the San Francisco Bay Area. Rosenbaum has been called a "superb storyteller". He is a founder and the director of Lehrhaus Judaica in Berkeley, California, described as "the largest Jewish adult education center in the western United States".

Rebecca Camhi Fromer was an American playwright, historian and poet. Fromer co-founded the Judah L. Magnes Museum of Berkeley, California, in 1961 with her husband, Seymour Fromer. The museum, which is now called the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and became part of the University of California, Berkeley in 2010, houses more than 15,000 Judaica artifacts and manuscripts, the third largest collection of its kind in the United States.

Koppel Shub Pinson (1904–1961) was a historian who specialized in the origins of German nationalism.

Arthur A. Goren was the Russell and Bettina Knapp Professor Emeritus of American Jewish History at Columbia University in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Szyk Society</span> Nonprofit organization founded to preserve the legacy of the artist Arthur Szyk

The Arthur Szyk Society, active from 1991 to 2017, was a nonprofit organization founded to preserve the legacy of the artist Arthur Szyk. Through its newsletters, art history papers, traveling exhibition, and group tours abroad, The Society presented Szyk's works to audiences in the United States and worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Henry Jacobs</span> American architect

Alfred Henry Jacobs was an American architect. He designed theaters, hotels, residential, and religious buildings, primarily working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Three of the buildings he designed are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He also worked as a watercolorist.

Michal Friedlander is a cultural historian and museum curator. She has been Curator of Judaica and Applied Arts at the Jewish Museum Berlin since 2001, developing the museum collections and curating exhibitions, both as a co-curator and alone.

Jacques Schnier (1898–1988) was a Romanian-born American artist, sculptor, author, educator, and engineer. He was a sculpture professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1936 to 1966.

References