October 6, 2024

Vol. 5, No. 40



The Early 1970s:

Yom Kippur War

Jewish Encyclopedia:

Jewish Community Relations Council

Small Towns:

Charleroi

Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life

The Witness Quilt: Positive Vidui

Exhibits:

A Woman's Place

Calendar:

Oct. 7: Commemoration

Oct 9: Jewish Delis

Oct 14: Lost Cousins



Community:

URA photographs

SHHS archives

"How We Got Here"

JCBA "Road-Trip"

Research Tools:

Newspapers, Cemeteries,

Memorial Plaques, Books,

Population Figures, Synagogues, Newsletter Archive,

Shul Records America

The Early 1970s:

Yom Kippur War

Front page of “Emergency Edition” of the Jewish Chronicle, published days after the start of the Yom Kippur War—Oct. 9, 1973.

—Jewish Chronicle

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

When the October 7 attack occurred, the most obvious historical corollary to the shock, anger, sadness, and fear was the Yom Kippur War in 1973. 

In our Internet and cell-phone age, it is easy to forget the crucial role local Jewish newspapers played informing American communities about events unfolding in Israel. The Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh published a rare special issue on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 1973, three days after the start of the war. The eight-page “emergency edition” included explainers about the war, a montage of wire photographs from Israel, and reports on a new local fundraising appeal.

Through the end of 1973, Chronicle Executive Editor Al Bloom used his contacts to publish a series of first-person accounts of the war from Pittsburgh families living in Israel, as well as Pittsburgh teens at youth programs and kibbutzim. 

You can read more about those letters at the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

Yom Kippur falls this year on Saturday, October 12. The Rauh Jewish Archives wishes all who observe the holiday an easy and meaningful fast.

All year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting stories of Jewish life in Western Pennsylvania in the early 1970s. If you would like to donate a material from this time period, or any historic materials documenting Jewish life in this region, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Jewish Community Relations Council

Lillian Adlow Friedberg—undated.

—Corinne Azen Krause Photographs [MSP 113]

The Rauh Jewish Archives recently published a finding aid and meeting minute index for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Records [MSS 287]. As part of that effort, we’re using this space for the next few weeks to summarize the history of the organization and its predecessors and projects.

At an annual meeting of national Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds held in Pittsburgh in February 1944, Edgar J. Kaufmann of Pittsburgh and Philmore J. Haber of Cleveland led an effort to create the National Community Relations Advisory Council. It would convene representatives of all Jewish organizations working to strengthen relationships between the Jewish community and its neighbors, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, and the Jewish Labor Committee. The organization is known today as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The national body also spurred the creation of local Community Relations Councils throughout the country, including here in Pittsburgh. Lillian A. Friedberg was hired in the early 1940s as the first executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Pittsburgh. In one of its first acts, the new JCRC partnered with the Urban League of Pittsburgh, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Council of Churches, and the American Service Institute to endorse Mayor David L. Lawrence’s Civic Unity Council.

Over the years, Friedberg expanded the role of the Jewish Community Relations Council from a defense agency responding to attacks against Jews to a “positive action program” promoting a civil rights agenda. As early as January 1948, she wrote that the Jewish Community Relations Council had "come to the realization that this job cannot be done by one minority group alone but is, rather, a challenge to all groups—those suffering disabilities and those cognizant of such injustices—to join forces toward the common end."

Small Town Jewish History Project:

Charleroi

Color photograph of the former Rodef Shalom Congregation synagogue on Washington Avenue in Charleroi—2017.

—Western Pennsylvania Synagogue Photographs

Charleroi was incorporated as a borough in 1891. The Charleroi Plate Glass Company built a plant in town the following year, and the borough soon became a global glass-making center, nicknamed “Magic City.”

Jewish families began settling in Charleroi soon after its incorporation. Sam Friedman had immigrated to Scranton, Pa. from Galicia during the 1890s to work in a factory. He unsuccessfully sought work in McKeesport in 1898 and walked to Charleroi, where he was hired at a grocery store. According to local historian Jacob Feldman, in his book The Jewish Experience in Western Pennsylvania, A History: 1755-1945, “Soon he bought a horse and wagon to peddle fruit. Entering the junk business a year later, he bought a scrapyard with his first $1,000 in savings a prospered. By 1918, he was one of the wealthiest men in Charleroi and was on the board of directors of three banks.”

Throughout the late 1910s and into the early 1920s, the Jewish community of Charleroi grew. The community started a series of religious schools and congregations, culminating in the incorporation of Rodef Shalom Congregation in 1924. The congregation broke ground on a synagogue on Washington Avenue near the intersection with Fifth Street in late 1925. A time capsule was placed in the cornerstone containing “records of the congregation and its members, together with a Bible and American and Zionist flags."

The Jewish population of Charleroi peaked in the late 1920s at around 300 people, according to the American Jewish Yearbook, and began to decline in the 1930s alongside a decline in the total population of the town. Rodef Shalom Congregation of Charleroi merged with Knesseth Israel Congregation of Monessen in 1967 to become Temple Beth Am, which remained in Monessen.

Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life

The Witness Quilt: Positive Vidui

Color photograph of a patch from the kittel layer of the Witness Quilt, reading "tamakhnu—"we have supported."

Vidui is the spiritual center of the Yom Kippur liturgy.

The vidui is a confessional prayer at the boundary of personal and communal responsibility. It is an alphabetical inventory of misdeeds, recited in the first-person plural: We have sinned. We have transgressed. We have stolen. It describes a brokenhearted world, desperate for atonement. These words have become so essential to Jewish spiritual life that they are the basis for last rites.

Louise Silk's new work "The Witness Quilt" subverts this experience. It borrows its form from a kittel, the all-white garment traditionally worn during Yom Kippur. The all-white underlayer of the Witness Quilt is embroidered with a "positive vidui" created by Rabbi Avi Weiss: We have love. We have blessed. We have grown. This version is not intended to replace the traditional vidui but rather to supplement it. If confessing misdeeds is a way to acknowledge failings, then confessing good deeds is a way of setting a path forward.

This underlayer is current hidden beneath hundreds of Bubbe Wisdoms, folk sayings hand stitched onto recycled fabric. It will slowly become revealed next year, starting in mid-February, when the Witness Quilt begins to be dismantled.

"Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life" will be on display in the Barensfeld Gallery on the fifth floor of the Heinz History Center through April 6, 2025.

Exhibit:

A Woman's Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh

“How Mrs. Enoch Rauh ushered in the year 1913 — on Dec. 31st 1912.”

—from Richard E. Rauh Papers [MSS 301]

From pioneering investigative journalism to leading their country to Olympic gold, Western Pennsylvania women have made an immeasurable impact in America, but too often, their stories have been overlooked.

The Heinz History Center is taking an unprecedented deep dive into the lives of these fierce and unflappable women who helped change the world inside a major new exhibition, A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh.

Take an interactive, thematic journey through Western Pennsylvania women’s history from the early 1800s to modern day that will showcase the stories of entrepreneurs and activists, artists and athletes, scientists and inventors, and changemakers and barrier breakers. Through more than 250 artifacts, immersive experiences, and striking archival images, A Woman’s Place will reveal how women have made Pittsburgh and the world a better place.  

Oct. 7:

University of Pittsburgh Jewish Studies Program Presents:

An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli

Oct. 9:

University of Pittsburgh Jewish Studies Program Presents:

An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli

Oct. 14:

JGS Pittsburgh Presents:

Gone Girl: Strategies for Finding

a VERY Long-Lost Female Cousin

DNA and document strategies will be unfolded in this quest for a female cousin. Finding females is a common genealogical challenge. When the woman does not want to be found, the challenge becomes even greater. Learn techniques for breaking through a brick wall and as well as the new problems on the other side of that wall.

The program is Monday, October 14 from 7:30-9:30 p.m. ET. This is an online program, occurring exclusively on Zoom. The program will be recorded, and the recording will be made available to current JGS-Pittsburgh members. 

“Gone Girl: Strategies for Finding a VERY Long-Lost Female Cousin” with Rhoda Miller is a collaboration between the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. Please register online. The program is free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. To become a member of the JGS-Pittsburgh and receive a free membership code for this program, please visit its website.

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

Rhoda Miller, Ed.D., CG® has been a Certified Genealogist since 1998, retired 2023, specializing in Jewish research and Holocaust studies. Rhoda is a Past President of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island (JGSLI) and currently serves on the Liaison Committee of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS). With JGSLI, she led the award-winning project of publishing Jewish Community of Long Island. She is a past board member of LitvakSIG and is currently the Coordinator for the Svencionys Research District. Rhoda retired as a Genealogist Researcher for Ancestry ProGenealogists. In May 2025, she will be the featured Jewish genealogist on a Mediterranean cruise.

Community

Urban Redevelopment Authority Archives

The City of Pittsburgh Archives has launched a new digital archive containing thousands of photographs and documents spanning more than two centuries. Of particular interest to local Jewish history is a collection of more than 2,000 photographs of properties in the lower Hill District taken by the Urban Redevelopment Authority in the late 1950s prior to demolitions in the area. 

Squirrel Hill Historical Society Archives

Squirrel Hill Historical Society has added a collection of 60 historic images of Squirrel Hill to the Historic Pittsburgh website. The collection contains selected images from three organizations: the Squirrel Hill Historical Society, Squirrel Hill Urban  Coalition, and Mary S. Brown Memorial-Ames United Methodist Church. The photographs document many aspects of life in Squirrel Hill, including many beloved businesses from the 1990s that no longer exist.

From the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh

"How We Got Here"

Each family is unique. 

Each family has its own traditions, its own spirit, and its own dynamics. 

Despite all these differences, every Jewish family in Western Pennsylvania has at least one thing in common: They all have a story about how they got here.

Perhaps your family sailed in steerage across the Atlanti in the 19th century.

Or perhaps your family drove the Pennsylvania Turnpike in a station wagon in the 1960s to work for the universities and hospitals during Renaissance.

Or perhaps your arrival into one of the many Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania involves marriage, or conversion, or a surprising DNA discovery.

Each of these stories is special, and each contributes to the larger story of our community. To collect and honor these origin stories, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh is launching a new initiative called “How We Got Here.” To participate, just write a short account explaining how you or your ancestors came to settle in Western Pennsylvania. All stories are welcome.

Stories will be eligible for inclusion in the JGS-Pittsburgh’s monthly newsletter Z’chor and also for preservation in the Rauh Jewish Archives. For more information about this initiative, or to contribute, contact Eric Lidji.

From the Jewish Cemetery & Burial Association

"Road Trip: The Jewish Cemeteries of Western Pennsylvania"

The Jewish Cemetery and Burial Association of Greater Pittsburgh has released a new documentary showcasing Jewish cemeteries in Western Pennsylvania.

“Road Trip: The Jewish Cemeteries of Western Pennsylvania” is a one-hour tour of the many cemetery properties overseen by the JCBA, as well as an overview of the organization’s ongoing work to care for these sacred burial grounds. The video is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate these special Jewish cultural sites in our region. The video includes many historic photographs and documents from the collections of the Rauh Jewish Archives. 

Research Tools

The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project contains digitized, searchable copies of four local English-language Jewish newspapers between 1895 and 2010. It is a valuable tool for researching almost any topic about Jewish history in Western Pennsylvania. For a primer on using the website, watch our video.

Western Pennsylvania Jewish Cemetery Project

The Rauh Jewish Archives launched the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Cemetery Project in 1998 to preserve burial records from Jewish cemeteries across the region. Over a period of fifteen years, the information was compiled into a searchable, online database containing approximately 50,000 burial records from 78 Jewish cemeteries throughout the region.

Western Pennsylvania Yahrzeit Plaques Project

The Rauh Jewish Archives launched the Western Pennsylvania Yahrzeit Plaques Project in 2020. The goal was to create a comprehensive collection of burial records from memorial boards at synagogues across the region. Volunteers are currently transcribing these boards and records are being added monthly to our online database. The database currently contains more than 2,700 listings.

Rauh Jewish Archives Bibliography

University of Pittsburgh librarian and Rauh Jewish Archives volunteer Laurie Cohen created this comprehensive bibliography of the Rauh Jewish Archives library holdings from 1988 through 2018. It lists nearly 350 volumes arranged by type and then by subject. This a great tool to use early in your research process, as you’re surveying available resources on a given subject.

Jewish Population Estimates

Looking to figure out how many Jews lived in a certain part of Western Pennsylvania at a certain moment in time? This bibliography includes more than 30 estimates of the Jewish population of Pittsburgh and small-towns throughout the region, conducted between 1852 and 2017.

Synagogues

A database of buildings throughout Western Pennsylvania known to have hosted Jewish worship services. Includes links to photographs and citations with original source material. Database currently includes 90 locations from 2 institutions

Rauh Jewish Archives Newsletter

The Rauh Jewish Archives has been publishing a weekly newsletter since 2020. The newsletter contains a variety of articles about local Jewish history, including much original research not found anywhere else. You can find and read every issue—more than 150!— in our new index.

Shul Records America

Online finding aid from JewishGen listing congregational archival collections held at publicly accessible repositories across the United States. Includes 63 listings from the Rauh Jewish Archives, as well as other repositories with Western Pennsylvania congregational records.

The Rauh Jewish Archives was founded on November 1, 1988 to collect and preserve the documentary history of Jewish life in Western Pennsylvania and to make it available to the world through research assistance, programing, exhibits, publications, and partnerships.

Shop | Join | Visit