Memoirs: Louis Michael
Coffey Club portrait
Shaare Zedeck Congregation
Robert's Restaurant
Calendar: John Kane, Jewish newspapers workshop
Community News
|
|
|
Memoirs:
“I Remember When”
|
|
Louis, Sol and Sidney Michael (from right to left) with Louis Michael’s daughter Jean.
—Michael Family Photographs [MSP 369]
|
|
Louis Michael was an engineer, and he wrote like an engineer. He is clear and practical. He pays attention to detail. He uses what materials are available.
As he explains in "I Remember When," his 1990 memoir:
“For the record of events prior to 1967 information was gleaned from a miscellany of sources, many having originated more than eight decades earlier—photographs, letters, checks, legal documents, and, in large part, my own fading memory. Now, however, occupying one of our bookshelves is a row of twenty-two diaries beginning on 23 October 1967 and preserved through the succeeding twenty-one years with not a single day going unrecorded. With such an abundance of personal records at hand, the problem becomes one of screening out 99 1/2 percent and editing the remaining one half percent that may or may not prove to be of some future interest.”
|
|
Michael came from one of the oldest Jewish families in Uniontown. His grandmother Julia Miller came to Western Pennsylvania from Germany about 1856 and married a Uniontown merchant named Louis Fell around 1870. Their daughter Flora Fell married Joseph Michael, and together they ran a popular store of mothers and babies.
Louis Michael was in his late 80s when he completed his memoir. In the 275-page book, he tells the story of his childhood in Uniontown, Pa. before World War I, his years at Penn State University, his struggles to find steady work during the Great Depression, his long career in civil service, and his decades as a boating enthusiast. He provides first-hand accounts of his time as a traveling social worker in rural Pennsylvania in the 1930s, of visiting downtown Pittsburgh during the 1936 flood, and of witnessing the development of the D.C.-suburb of Springfield, Va. in the years after World War II.
|
|
"How To Build A Caterpillar Tank," by Louis Michael, 1917.
—Michael Family Papers [MSS 369]
|
|
"I Remember When," 1990.
—Michael Family Papers [MSS 369]
|
|
He also provides a thoughtful account of his Jewish life. A chapter titled "Religion" is an insightful overview of the varied ways one man expressed his Jewish identity throughout his long life. He considers the importance of spirituality, the challenge of dogma, the lure of custom, and the shock of encountering antisemitism. He shows the many ways a person can participate in a community.
In addition to these stories and perspectives, “I Remember When” contains more than 150 pages of supplementary materials: a comprehensive names index, a thorough family tree, various lists and logs, and even copies of the annual newsletters Michael created from 1968 to 1990. In some ways, these pages reveal as much about his mind and personality than the stories.
|
|
Next week: Background Music
All year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting memoirs of Jewish life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate a memoir, or just chat about the stories you've read, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
|
|
New Collection:
Coffey Club Group Portrait [2021.0073]
|
|
Coffey Club group portrait, 1919
—2021.0073
|
|
The Coffey Club is the most legendary Jewish sports team in Pittsburgh.
It began in 1908 as a youth athletic club. It was named after its patron John Coffey, a newspaper distributor of Irish ancestry who lived in the Hill District alongside young Jewish boys. The Coffey Club fielded teams in several sports but was best known for its basketball team. It excelled in various regional leagues, competed against teams from outside the region, participated in a heated and long-standing rivalry with the Second Story Morrys. The Coffey Club eventually oversaw its own league and sporting venue. The team declined over the course of the 1920s, as its members started families and careers.
|
|
The Coffey Club group portrait shows the team in 1919, when it was at the height of its success and renown. That was also a year when the team was just recovering from delays caused by World War I drafts and enlistments.
|
|
Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
Shaare Zedeck Congregation
|
|
Photograph showing 12-20 Townsend Street, including the Shaare Zedeck synagogue at 14 Townsedn Street. Part of a series of images collected by the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House as part of efforts to document housing conditions in the Hill District.
—from Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Photographs [MSP 389]
|
|
Shaare Zedeck Congregation was an Orthodox congregation founded by Polish immigrants to Pittsburgh. It began meeting in the late 1890s and received a charter in January 1900. The congregation initially rented quarters at 7 Scott St. in the Hill District before dedicating a newly built synagogue at 14 Townsend St. in 1907. Shaare Zedeck remained in the Hill District until the mid-1940s, when it relocated to 5751 Bartlett St. in Squirrel Hill.
Our entry for Shaare Zedeck includes its charter, a seat certificate, a complete copy of its “hadlukah” banquet souvenir book from 1935, photographs of its Hill District synagogue and Carrick cemetery, and various newspaper articles.
|
|
The Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania brings together numerous online resources into a clearinghouse for conducting research about Jewish history in this region. As we migrate information to this new website, we’ll be announcing new entries and resources in this section of the newsletter. |
|
Do you remember Robert’s Restaurant? |
|
|
|
I wish there was more documentation of local Jewish-owned eateries. Aside from some good photographs of old mom and pop groceries stores, there is very little about the many restaurants, delicatessens and bakeries that fill thousands of Jewish hearts with warm nostalgia. So many beloved places like Caplans, Weinsteins, Richests, Bubbles & Sherman, Rosenbaums, Silberbergs, Pastries Unlimited, Simple Treats, Yaakovs, Bageland and many more exist today only in advertisements and occasionally in menus.
The Rauh Jewish Archives recently received a matchbook from Robert’s Restaurant & Bar. It’s not one of the better-known Jewish restaurants in town. I’d never heard of it. Without the “Kosher” symbol, I wouldn’t have even known it was Jewish...
|
|
Calendar: Past and Present |
|
Now Open:
“Pittsburgh’s John Kane:
The Life & Art of an American Workman”
|
|
"Crossing the Junction," John Kane |
|
The Carnegie Institute surprised the art world in 1927 when it accepted a painting called “Scene from the Scottish Highlands” into its annual International Exhibition of Paintings. The exhibit, now called the Carnegie International, was one of the longest-running and most important surveys of American contemporary painting, a showcase of world-famous painters.
The artist was John Kane, a 67-year-old immigrant laborer in Pittsburgh with no formal art training but an artistic eye and approach all his own. Through the exposure from the exhibit, Kane gained international recognition in the final years of his life. Today, his work can be found in some of the most prestigious art museums in America, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago.
The local art world has revisited Kane many times since his death in 1934, but there has never been a thorough historical examination of his life. The new Heinz History Center exhibit “Pittsburgh’s John Kane: The Life & Art of an American Workman” is the first to consider how Kane’s life and world influenced his art. Grounded in scholarship from Louise Lippincott and Maxwell King's new book “American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane,” the exhibit asks: How did an immigrant worker roaming around Western Pennsylvania at the turn of the century become an artist of national acclaim?
“Pittsburgh’s John Kane” includes 37 paintings by Kane from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Carnegie Museum of Art, American Folk Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Phillips Collection, and others collections. The exhibit also includes rarely seen archival objects, including a collection of silver gelatin photographs Kane took as painting studies. An immersive walk-through of Kane’s final painting—“Crossing the Junction”—will allow visitors to travel through a Pittsburgh landscape as Kane did and explore his artistic process.
The exhibit is now open and runs through the rest of the year.
|
|
June 26:
How to Use the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project
|
|
The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project is a free, online collection of English-language newspapers covering the Jewish population of Western Pennsylvania from 1895 to 2010. Carnegie Mellon University hosts the website and recently moved it to a new online platform. To help researchers with this transition, the Rauh Jewish Archives, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle are providing a free online workshop to help researchers use the website. We’ll introduce the website, review its basic features and functions, and offer tips and techniques for conducting research. We’ll also be collecting questions and suggestions.
This vritual program is on Sun., June 26 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Please register online. The program will be recorded and made available online.
|
|
The 1950 Census is now online.
You can access the census data using the link below. As additional research tools become the coming weeks and months, we'll share them here.
If you would like help using these records, please contact the Archive.
|
|
Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project |
|
The home page of the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project website, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. The redesigned website is launching this month. |
|
By now, you're probably expertly zipping around the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project platform. But if you still need a little help navigating the features and tools of the website, the Rauh Jewish Archives recently contributed a brief explanatory article to the Jewish Chronicle. It provides some basic tips and techniques for conducting research using the new site.
We plan to provide a live virtual training workshop in the near future to review the website and its functionalities. Until then, we are here to help you troubleshoot problems. You can contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
|
|
[IMAGE: Marian Schreiber and employees at the Schreiber Trucking Company, c.1943—from Schreiber Family Papers and Photographs, MSS 846.]
If you like this newsletter, why not forward it to a friend? We want to share the story of Western Pennsylvania Jewish history with as many people as possible.
If you've received this newsletter from a friend or neighbor, and you want to read more, just click on the link below to start receiving future editions.
|
|
The Rauh Jewish Archives was founded on November 1, 1988 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the documentary history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania. You can help the RJHPA continue its work by making a donation that will directly support the work being done in Western Pa. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
