No. 41

Memoir: "Looking Back"

Dora Stiglitz Wechsler Photograph [2022.0008]

Children’s Aid Society of Jewish Women [pictured]

Calendar: Sukkot, JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Emily Gerber



Community News: The Letters, Jakob's Torah, 1950 Census, Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

Memoir:

"Looking Back"

Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, a University of Pittsburgh student named Isadore Weiss submitted a paper titled “Looking Back.” Despite the title, the history recounted in the 148-page manuscript was fairly recent. The story begins in mid-1912, when Weiss’ brother leaves for America. Their father had already made the trip, but he found he could not make enough on his own to bring the family over and sent for the oldest boy. The story ends in September 1920, when the family receives the funds to come to America.

Weiss’ manuscript was relatively unknown outside of his immediate circle until 2009, when his family expanded the original account using subsequent supplementary historical materials and published it as “Looking Back: the Russian Revolution Through the Eyes of a Jewish Child.”

In “Looking Back,” Weiss describes life in a Ukrainian shtetl during those eight years of waiting. These were years of revolution, war, pogrom, famine, and pandemic. Like so many other villages of that time, the small Jewish community in his village is whipped back and forth by larger powers: the Russian monarchy, the Bolsheviks, the emerging Ukrainian nation, the occupying Germans, and the Poles. Each operates differently, requiring the Weiss family and others like them to constantly adapt in order to survive. 

Their dramas are so small, and yet they are so stark. The Weisses learn about a shortage of vodka in the area and decide to bootleg. They convince a tinner to make a still on spec. They bury the machine in the floor of their home, taking it out only at night to produce the vodka. They briefly build a successful business, only to have their still discovered by soldiers and destroyed. 

The manuscript would be oppressively sad if not for the warmth and sincerity of Weiss’ writing. He describes every experience directly, in the moment, giving a feeling of vitality to the story. One particularly moving account finds the entire Jewish community holding a wedding ceremony in the cemetery one night in the middle of winter. The local rabbis had proposed this event to combat the influenza epidemic racing through the village. The community is initially skeptical but eventually agrees. They find a young, engaged couple willing to start their marriage among the graves of the recently deceased.

“Then the resonant voice of the rabbi began to be heard. At first the prayers were delivered up in low tones. But as he warmed up to the chanting, his voice assumed a somewhat higher pitch. With his head raised, he stood motionless, except for his moving mouth, in the bitter cold and offered up to the Almighty one prayer after another. 

“The crowd soon forgot its griefs. Spellbound, we also stood motionless as we watched this awe-inspiring personage communing, as it were, with God. We did not mind the extreme cold. In fact we did not feel it, for our minds were taken up with spiritual instead of earthy things. Even as we watched the Rabbi pray for the whole town, each one of us separately, silently, prayed that the beloved ones sick at home be spared…”

New Collection:

Dora Stiglitz Wechsler Photograph [2022.0008]

Dora Stiglitz Wechsler wedding portrait, 1902

—from Dora Stiglitz Wechsler Collection [2022.0008]

Joseph Stiglitz immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1872. He lived in the mining town of Leadville, Co. before bringing over his wife Chaje “Alice” and daughter Fradel “Fannie.” They lived briefly in New York and then came to Wampum, Pa. in the early 1880s, shortly after their daughter Dora was born. Dora Stiglitz married her father’s business partner Abe Wechsler (1877-1962) of Pittsburgh in a ceremony in Wampum in 1902. The Dora Stiglitz Wechsler Collection [2022.0008] includes a copy of Dora Stiglitz Wechsler’s wedding photograph and a short essay about the family by her cousin Marci Levin.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Children’s Aid Society of Jewish Women

Members of the Jewish Children's Aid Society, c.1955

—from Children’s Aid Society of Jewish Women Photographs [MSS 224]

The Children’s Aid Society of Jewish Women was a fundraising and advocacy organization supporting Jewish children. The organization began in 1917 as the Jewish Children’s Aid Society. In its early years, it raised funds for other institutions in the city, including the Jewish Home for Babies and Children, the Gusky Orphanage, the League for the Hard of Hearing, the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, the Home for Crippled Children, and Montefiore Hospital, as well as national organizations such as the National Home for Jewish Children in Denver and the Youth Aliyah. In time, its mission evolved and expanded to include dental care, support for Cerebral Palsy patients, and several group homes for children with intellectual disabilities.

October 10-18:

Sukkot

Congregation Dor Hadash members decorating a sukkah outside the former Hebrew Institute building at Forbes and Denniston in Squirrel Hill, c1967.

—from Congregation Dor Hadash Records [MSS 410]

Sukkot is October 10-18 this year. The Rauh Jewish Archives phone line and email account will be closed Oct. 10, 11, 17 and 18, but the Library & Archives reading room will be open for its usual hours this week and next. The Rauh Jewish Archives wishes a meaningful and safe holiday to all who observe it.

November 13:

JGS-Pittsburgh Presents: Emily G

Get on board for a guided tour through your family’s complex history! In this all-day hybrid seminar led by Emily Garber, you’ll learn where to start and how to explore your relatives’ lives. Discover clues about your family in the records they left behind. Train in the best research practices. Track your findings as you go. This course will set you up for future success in your Jewish family history journey. Seminar also includes an introductory session showing you how to find your Western Pennsylvania ancestors in the archives.

The program is Sunday, November 13 from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. For a complete schedule of the seminar, visit the Heinz History Center website.

It is a hybrid event, with options for in-person and online participation. It's free for JGS-Pittsburgh members, $10 for non-members joining online and $15 for non-members joining in person. Attendees can reserve a boxed lunch from Creative Kosher for $20 or bring their own. Please register online. 

This is a hybrid program. Portions will be recorded, and the recordings will be made available for JGS-Pittsburgh members who are current on their dues.

This program is possible through the support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.

An archaeologist by training (B.A., Vassar College; M.A., University of New Mexico), Emily Garber is a professional genealogy researcher, writer and speaker who specializes in Jewish genealogical research. She has researched both Eastern European and German Jewish communities and immigrants to the United States and Great Britain. She has toured family shtetlach (communities) and explored archives in Ukraine.

After retiring from her 30-plus year career in natural resources management, Emily earned a certificate from Boston University’s Genealogical Research program. She has spoken at nine International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conferences, as well as National Genealogical Society’s conferences, the New York State Family History Conference and the Utah Genealogical Society’s Summit of Excellence. She has presented talks and seminars throughout the United States, and in Israel and Poland. She coordinated two different weeklong seminars on Jewish genealogy at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. She has authored four articles published in Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy and, for a client, completed two privately published volumes chronicling the 300-year history of a German Jewish family. She writes a family history blog, The Extra Yad.

Emily serves on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. She also chairs the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group and is on the board of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. She served for about 10 years as one of the moderators of the JewishGen Discussion Group.

[Right] Gertrude Perles of Vienna. [Left] Hasele and Abe Levy of Pittsburgh.

—from A. Sanford Levy and Gertrude Deutsch Perles Papers [MFF 4883]

"The Letters: A Plea for Help"

In late October 1938, Abe and Hasele Levy of Pittsburgh received a letter from Gertrude Perles, a stranger in Vienna who was trying to escape the Nazis and come to the United States. “My husband and I are both Jews,” she wrote. “I am sure you know what is going on here and I need not give you a more precise explanation. It is growing worse every day. Our only hope is to emigrate to the U.S.A. Please, if you are able to send affidavits for me and my husband, for Heaven’s sake, do it, before it will be too late for us.”

Over the next few months, the Levys worked to help this Viennese couple through the challenges and pressures of the immigration process. Their correspondence is preserved in the A. Sanford Levy and Gertrude Deutsch Perles Papers [MFF 4883] held by the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. The collection vividly shows the logistical and emotional challenges facing Jewish refugees as they navigated the immigration process.

Iris Samson of WQED recently produced a short documentary about the collection of letters titled The Letters: A Plea for Help. The moving 15-minute documentary places the eight-month correspondence into the larger context of the Anschluss, the Holocaust, and the start of World War II.

By now, you're probably expertly zipping around the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project platform. But if you still need a little help navigating its features and tools, you can view a virtual training workshop at the link below. Or, you can contact the archive or call 412-454-6406 with your questions.