YESHIVA UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES COLLECTIONS

The Archives holds organizational and institutional records and private papers relating to modern Jewish history and culture in the United States and abroad. As the   repository for Yeshiva University records the Archives retains papers of University administrators created in their official capacity, files of the Public Relations Office, and copies of official University and student publications. Correspondence, photographs, audiotapes, architectural drawings, and ephemera exemplify the types of material in the Collections.

American Jewish history is one of the strengths of the Archives. Papers of prominent lay and rabbinic leaders include those of:

• Benjamin Koenigsberg (1884-1975), an Orthodox lawyer who was active in Young Israel, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and Jewish institutions on the Lower East Side.
• Peter Wiernik (1865-1936), editor of the Jewish Morning Journal and member of the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
• Rabbi Henry S. Morais (1860-1924) of New York and Philadelphia.
• Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung (1892-1987), rabbi of the Jewish Center on 86th Street in Manhattan.

Congregational records include:

• Chevrah Poel Zedek Anschei Illia (Lower East Side), 1893-1961.
• First Roumanian American Congregation Shaare Shamayim (Lower East Side), 1915-1919.
• Institutional Synagogue (Harlem), 1917-1967.

The Irving I. Herzberg Photograph Collection depicts Hasidic life in Williamsburg and Crown Heights (Brooklyn, NY) between the years 1962 and 1988. Jewish life outside New York City is recorded in oral history interviews in the "Early Jewish Roots" section of the Moses Schonfeld Collection.

Jewish communities overseas are documented in the:

• Israeli Broadside Collection, 1878-1981.
• French Consistorial Collection, 1809-1939.
• Jamie Lehmann Memorial Collection - Records of the Jewish Community of Cairo, 1886-1961.
• Mordechai Bernstein Collection, 1605-1965 - records of German-Jewish communities.

Records of New York based relief organizations and Holocaust rescue efforts include:

• Central Relief Committee, 1914-1958.
• Vaad Hatzala, 1939-1963.
• Rescue Children, Inc., 1946-1985.
• Central Orthodox Committee, 1947-1950.
• National Council of Jewish Women: Service for the Foreign Born, 1920-1968.
• Center for Russian Jewry - Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, 1962-1990.

Most of these groups conducted their work abroad, and their files document the communities they aided, many of which are no longer in existence. The Central Relief Committee supported Orthodox educational institutions in Eastern Europe and Palestine between the two world wars. Statistical information on many of these schools may be found in the Collection. The Vaad Hatzala, Rescue Children, and the Central Orthodox Committee Collections record rescue efforts during World War II as well as life in orphanages and Displaced Persons camps after the war.

Published GUIDES for selected collections may be obtained from the Archives.

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