No. 50

Memoir: Howie Gordon

Sylvia and Donald Robinson Family Papers and Photographs [MSS 1035]

Torath Chaim Congregation

Calendar: JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn



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

Memoirs:

"Return to Squirrel Hill"

"Tween Scene," by Lloyd Segal and Howie Gordon, Y Weekly, Feb. 8, 1963.

Of all the things that can prompt memory, one of the most profound is a familiar place, revisited after some significant passage of time. Under the right conditions, even the mundane details of an old neighborhood can open a wellspring onto the past. 

Howie Gordon was raised in Greenfield and Squirrel Hill in the 1960s. He returned to town in the early 1990s for an extended period while his mother had a major operation. He kept a dairy, which became the basis for his 2019 book “Return to Squirrel Hill: A Memoir.” 

Gordon begins in the present. He details the hospital and the nurses and the family dynamics around helping a loved one through a stressful, uncertain procedure. 

But simply being back home—sleeping in the old house on Lilac Street, walking past the storefronts on Murray Avenue, working out at the Jewish Community Center, spotting old friends on the street—soon creates a thick atmosphere of memories from childhood. Gordon’s story volleys between the immediacy of the days in the hospital and the swirl of his childhood in the 14th Ward in the 1960s and 1970s. He calls these recurring memories “the personal Talmud of our lives.”

The book includes extended accounts of two beloved figures from Gordon's past. The first is his Uncle Izzy, a bright childlike light who lived with the family throughout Gordon’s childhood. The other is Harold Harris, a lifelong friend who undergoes a tragic struggle with mental illness as an adult. Gordon's stories of these men are full of humanity—compassion, frustration, humor, and sadness. Their lives become the edges of the twisting path Gordon takes through life, a path that eventually leads back to Squirrel Hill. 

"Return to Squirrel Hill: A Memoir," by Howie Gordon, 2019.

Gordon writes, "I lie in my mom’s old bed. I think I’m sleeping. The memories are pouring over me like water. They refresh me. They soothe me. I can see Harold dancing. Harold could dance. He could really dance. Harold was something special. He would one day become my best friend.

"The first time I ever saw Harold was in the fourth grade. He and David came riding their fancy English Racer bikes onto our playground one summer’s day.

They were an impressive sight to us on their sleek Racers. They lived just over the hill where all the houses cost a lot more. Me and my friends didn’t have the slender, 3-speed English Racers. We had the used, fat-wheeled Schwinns without the fenders. Ours had only one gear and if we were lucky, they still had their brakes.

"Harold and David were dressed in stylish penny loafers without socks, Madras Bermuda shorts, and blue Brooks Brothers dress shirts with the gant in the back. Brooks Brothers was like Beverly Hills. They looked like a magazine ad."

New Collection:

Sylvia and Donald Robinson Family

Papers and Photographs [MSS 1035]

Photograph showing A. Robinson & Sons, Inc. store and warehouse located at 2711-19 Penn Avenue in the Strip District neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

—from Sylvia and Donald Robinson Papers and Photographs [MSS 1035]

Sylvia and Donald Robinson were communal, philanthropic, cultural, and business leaders in the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. The Sylvia and Donald Robinson Papers and Photographs [MSS 1035] documents the couple and their work through correspondence, flyers, invitations, newspaper clippings, programs, photographs, photographic albums, scrapbooks, certificates, biographies, resumes, cassette tapes, oral histories, posters, meeting minutes, agendas, finances and disbursements, obituaries, and scrapbooks. These records document their family history, as well as their work in the Jewish community through the United Jewish Federation, the American Friends of Israeli War Disabled, and the Jewish Theater of Pittsburgh.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Torath Chaim Congregation

Photograph showing interior of the sanctuary of the Torath Chaim Congregation synagogue at 728 N. Negley Ave., taken from the women’s balcony. Shows the location of bima (dais), amud (podium), ark, and memorial plaques.

—from Gerald Sapir Papers and Photographs [MSS 775]

Torath Chaim Congregation was founded in the East End of Pittsburgh in 1927 by supporters of Rabbi Jacob Joseph Hurvitz. The first meeting of the congregation was the bar mitzvah of Samuel E. Shapiro on September 17, 1927, held in a newly purchased house at 728 N. Negley Ave. The congregation renovated the building in 1931 and again in 1948. The later renovation expanded the sanctuary to include seating for 700 people on two levels, a mural painted by Samuel Savage, and a dramatic façade featuring a large menorah set in stonework. In its final years, Torath Chaim Congregation increasingly relied upon students from Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh to lead services during the year and especially on the High Holidays. With the decline in the Jewish population of the East End, the congregation became the last formal Jewish institution in the neighborhood, closing in 2004. 

Our entry for Torath Chaim Congregation includes exterior and interior photographs of its Negley Avenue shul in the East End, a copy of its constitution in English and Yiddish, and assorted newspaper articles.

TODAY:

JGS-Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn

This talk by internationally renowned genealogist Vivian Kahn will reference records from the vast area that was formerly part of Hungary, which includes present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, northern Serbia, northwestern Romania, and Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to hear from someone who has been instrumental in obtaining many of these records! With almost 2 million records already on-line and more added regularly, the JewishGen Hungary Database is one of the best resources for researching Hungarian Jewish families.

There are, however, a wide variety of websites that are less familiar to many researchers and can help you grow your family trees. This presentation will highlight what’s available from JewishGen and identify other less familiar on-line resources that can help you to expand your Hungarian research horizons.

Although many of them are in Hungarian, armed with a list of basic genealogical terms and an understanding of the site design and contents you can search these resources even if you don’t understand Hungarian. Vivian Kahn will review some of these websites, describe what they offer and provide tips on how to use them even if you don’t know a word of Hungarian.

The program is Sunday, Dec. 11 from 1-2:30 p.m. ET It's free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. Please register online. 

All attendees are encouraged to log on 30 minutes early for a virtual open house. It’s an opportunity to share genealogy stories and make new friends.

This is a virtual program. It will be recorded, and the recording 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.

Vivian Kahn is JewishGen’s Hungarian SIG Director. She has presented workshops on Jewish genealogy and, especially, Hungarian Jewish family research at IAJGS annual conferences, for Jewish genealogy societies, and in Sighet, Romania, during a May 2015 gathering of Sighet descendants. Since beginning research on her own family from greater Hungary more than 25 years ago, she has identified and used a wide range of archival, print, and on-line resources to research families from Hungary, Moravia, Slovakia, Romania, and Galicia and has made research trips to Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. Vivian has also written several articles on Hungarian Jewish family research that appeared in the print and on-line versions of Avotaynu and in other Jewish genealogy publications. Vivian was recognized as JewishGen’s Volunteer of the Year in 2021. Vivian is an urban planning and development consultant and teaches planning classes for University of California extension programs. She lives in Sonoma County, California.

[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.