No. 46

Memoir: Alice Steiner Moss

Lynne and Blair Jacobson Family Papers [MSS 1221]

Southwestern District of Pennsylvania

Jewish Religious Schools Program

Calendar: JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn



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

Memoirs:

"Family"

“Family,” by Alice Steiner Moss, 2000

Think of the twistiest twists your life has taken. 

Think of the unplanned encounters that took you along a different path than the one you had been traveling, delivering you to a defining moment—perhaps for good, perhaps not.

Think about the decisions you made in those moments, the way you read all the available information to figure out whether you should stay or go, whether to wait or to act, and how.

Now carry yourself far into the future.

All the major changes of your life will likely be documented. Marriage, divorce, children, an advanced degree, a new house, a new job, unemployment—they all leave a trace, often without you knowing it.

What rarely survives is the rationale.

One of the most common questions genealogists ask is “Why?” Why did my ancestors make the decisions they make? The question can usually be answered only by speculation. Unless your ancestors provided an explanation.

“Family,” by Alice Steiner Moss, is an account of rationale. 

The Steiner family came to Western Pennsylvania from the Slovak region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the first decade of the 20th century and spilled across many small towns: Ford City, New Kensington, Kittanning, Indiana, and others. They found opportunities in various lines of business, and they changed businesses and towns often, as circumstances changed. 

In warm and candid prose, Moss guides us through the meandering path of her family story. Each paragraph starts one place and ends someplace completely different, as cousins and friends enter the account and carry her memories down a different path, zigzagging happily through the decades.

Arnold, Emerich, Bill, and Alice Steiner, c1918

—from “Family,” by Alice Steiner Moss, 2000

One of the most memorable characters is her father Simon Steiner. He built a thriving market in New Kensington and eventually turned Steiner Brothers into a massive operation with a huge smoke house to meet the demand for kohlbasi and sausage. He bought a Ford and a big house in the emerging Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh with a baby grand piano and leather furniture. A car crash one day changed everything, sending Simon into decades of professional instability and economic uncertainty. He ends his career peddling men’s shirts from town to town, trying to clear an overstocked inventory.

As Alice writes: “I cannot leave my memoirs of my father on that poignant note. Looming larger than his lack of business success was his lively curiosity about everything, people, places, how things work. He drew plans for turn signals and back up lights on cars long before any car had them. He drew up plans for a parking garage based on the idea of a Ferris wheel, and many years later such were built. He loved to browse through our set of encyclopedias, interested in any kind of information, just for the fun of knowing. Above all was his love of having fun with children, especially when the grandchildren came along. He never lost the capacity to enjoy his wife’s wonderful cooking and praise her, to surprise her with a gift, to enjoy poker and pinochle.”

Aaron and Regina Steiner with their 17 grandchildren, Spring 1914

—from “Family,” by Alice Steiner Moss, 2000

Her own story also takes unexpected turns, most notably her own death. The memoir ends abruptly, while recalling a trip to Rome in the 1970s. As her brother Arnold and his daughter Rebecca explain in an epilogue: “Alice has been the strong thread that has kept this widespread network of cousins, nephews, nieces and their offspring from unraveling. So many of these items now in print, those tales of family gatherings when the entire clan live in New Kensington some 80 or 85 years ago, life in Ford City, all the intrigues, successes, and failures have been told and retold by Alice with love and nostalgia.”

New Collection:

Lynne and Blair Jacobson Family

Papers and Photographs [MSS 1221]

Note confirming S. Somerman’s receipt of $1500 from Louis Eisenfeld for his partnership in the company, 1920.

—from Lynne and Blair Jacobson Family Papers and Photographs [MSS 1221]

The Lynne and Blair Jacobson Family Papers and Photographs [MSS 1221] documents one family with branches extending into different aspects of the Jewish experience in Western Pennsylvania, including the immigrant struggle of the early 20th century, the closeness of small-town Jewish life, and Squirrel Hill in its expansive 1950s heyday. The collection document organizations large (Rodef Shalom Congregation and the Hebrew Institute) and small (Camp Machigon and the Woodbine Boys Club and provides insights into the stability and evolution of Jewish family life in the 20th century.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Southwestern District of Pennsylvania

Jewish Religious Schools Program

Religious School of Tree of Life Congregation in Canonsburg, Pa., 1917.

—from Finkel Family Papers [2001.0254]

The Southwestern District of Pennsylvania Jewish Religious Schools Program was an educational initiative providing teacher training, curriculum development, classroom materials, and financial aid to Jewish religious schools in smaller communities in Pittsburgh and throughout the surrounding tri-state region. Throughout its existence, the program included at least 73 schools with some 325 teachers and 3,000 students. The National Council of Jewish Women-Pittsburgh Section and the Rodef Shalom Congregation Sisterhood sponsored the program and oversaw its implementation.

December 11:

JGS-Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn

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 other 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 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.