February 11, 2024

Vol. 5, No. 6



The Early 1970s:

Duke Ellington

Small Towns Project:

Connellsville

Article:

Frieda LaVictoire



Calendar:

Feb. 17: Soul to Soul

March 3: Finding Maiden Names

"The Sofer"

Community:

Fine Fellowship

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:

The Montefiore Ball

Front and back of poster for “The Ladies and the Duke,” announcing upcoming appearance by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra at the Montefiore Ball—November 4, 1972.

—gift of Gerald Sapir [2018.0161]

In the last 18 months of his life, Duke Ellington published his autobiography, labored over an unfinished opera, performed his Third Sacred Concert, and toured the world, including a one-night gig at the Allegheny Club of the Three Rivers Stadium for the Ladies Hospital Aid Society’s annual Montefiore Ball.

How did they pull it off?

Two-page newspaper spread with photographs from the 1972 Montefiore Ball featuring Duke Ellington and His Orchestra—November 9, 1972.

—from Jewish Chronicle

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

The Hebrew Ladies Hospital Aid Society was created in 1898 to advocate for the establishment of a Jewish hospital in Pittsburgh. With the establishment of Montefiore Hospital in the Hill District in 1908, the Ladies Hospital Aid Society became a leading supporter of the hospital, helping it expand in the Hill District and eventually relocate to a new hospital in Oakland in the 1920s.

Support became especially crucial throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as Montefiore Hospital pursued an expansion, which we’ll review later in the year.

To do its part, the Ladies Hospital Aid Society made a 10-year, $350,000 pledge (about $3.6 million today) to Montefiore Hospital in 1961, an initiative called “A Decade of Dollars and Devotion.” The annual Montefiore Ball was an essential part of the Ladies Hospital Aid Society's fundraising strategy.

Between the early 1940s and the early 1960s, the Holiday Ball (as it was previously known) raised more than $600,000 for Montefiore Hospital—equivalent to millions today. The funding covered many essential projects, including an intensive care unit, a new post-op recover suite, refurbished pathology and x-ray departments, and air-conditioned operating rooms.

The Ladies Hospital Aid Society met its 10-year fundraising goal in 1970, a year early. It celebrated by launching an even more ambitious $400,000 pledge. The new campaign began with two high-profile guests. Count Basie headlined the Montefiore Ball in 1971, followed by Duke Ellington in 1972. (The Yom Kippur War pre-empted the Montefiore Ball in 1973. The Society conducted a silent campaign that year, rather than hosting a big event.)

One of many important figures of this era was Janice Friedman. She ran the beloved Maternity Fashions store downtown, first in the Jenkins Arcade and later in the Buhl Building. She was also a professional show-writer, best known for her long partnership with Don Brockett. She joined the Ladies Hospital Aid Society board in 1960 and became an in-house resource, producing original shows for the group. She co-chaired the 1972 Montefiore Ball featuring Duke Ellington and later became president of the Society in the late 1970s.

Promotional images for the Montefiore Ball—October 19 and November 2, 1972.

—from Jewish Chronicle

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

The status of women was being re-evaluated throughout American society in the early 1970s, including the Jewish community. You can see that re-evaluation at work with the Ladies Hospital Aid Society during these years.

In a profile in the Pittsburgh Press in November 1972, around the time of Duke Ellington's appearance at the Montefiore Ball, Sylvia Sachs noted that volunteer auxiliaries had often been “shrugged off as well meaning amateurs merely to be tolerated around hospitals.” It was hard to shrug off the Ladies Hospital Aid Society, which had more than 3,000 members and cleared more than $100,000 annually for the hospital. “The leaders of LHAS have gradually become business executives, tycoons of high finance,” Sachs wrote.

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 historically relevant materials documenting Jewish life in this region, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.

Small Towns Jewish History Project:

Connellsville

Black and white photograph of the Connellsville Drum and Bugle Corps—c.1930.

—from S.R. Rackoff Photographs [MSP 312]

Connellsville was incorporated in the late 18th century and became renowned a century later with the development of its prolific coalfields and coke works. 

By the turn of the 20th century, the local Jewish population of Connellsville had grown large enough to support communal institutions. A group of families living in Connellsville and nearby New Haven chartered B’nai Israel Congregation about 1898. The congregation acquired a building at 434 N. Pittsburg St. from the United Presbyterian Church in 1910 and converted it into a synagogue. The congregation extensively renovated the building in the mid-1950s into the Connellsville Jewish Community Center. With the switch, the synagogue building increasingly served a social function within the local Jewish community, and Jewish families often travelled to nearby communities such as Greensburg for other needs like prayer and religious education.

We first published our Connellsville entry in July 2017. We’ve recently updated the entry to include a finding aid for the Myrna Helinsky Cohen Papers [MSS 1078], which contains the original minute book of the congregation, as well as assorted communal records from the 1970s. We’ve also included fully indexed memorial boards, a recent photograph of the former synagogue building from the Rabbi Dovid Krautwirth Collection, a list of local families, expanded population statistics, and a link to the archived original version of the entry.

Article:

"A Facade of a Facade of a Facade"

"I like old buildings with aging renovations — the more layers the better… My current favorite example of layered quality is 618 Clay Ave. in Jeannette. Today the building is home to Colors Birthday Party Place. The façade is a zany, blinking grid of primary colors beneath a blaring marquee. Squint through all those colors, though, and you can instantly tell that the underlying building is from an earlier era in town history."

Black and white photograph of 618 Clay Ave., former home of the LaVictoire family, created by the American Industrial Heritage Project for the Historic American Buildings Survey—1990.

—from Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS PA-6105

LAST CALL

Congregation Beth Shalom Presents:

Soul to Soul

Soul To Soul follows the experience of the African American and Jewish communities and their paths to America’s promise of freedom in a dazzling multi-media program. 

Celebrating its 109th season, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF), under the direction of Zalman Mlotek, is visiting Pittsburgh for the first time to stage Soul To Soul.

Sung by brilliant performers with careers spanning from Broadway to the pulpit, these stirring songs range from spirituals, jazz, civil rights era anthems to Yiddish traditional and theatre songs from the Great American Songbook, culminating in a high-energy collection of enthralling music, highlighting the historic partnership between Blacks and Jews. 

The recently restored Kaufmann Center’s state-of-the-art Elsie H. Hillman auditorium in the city’s historic Hill District is the perfect venue for this concert. The Hill District embodies the shared history of these two communities in Pittsburgh: It was the center of Jewish life from the late 1880s into the early 1930s and, "the Hill" was the cultural center of Black life and a major center of jazz since before World War I. The venue is run by ACH Clear Pathways and serves as a vibrant artistic hub of the neighborhood and repository of this cultural legacy. 

The concert features the talents of Lisa Fishman (NYTF's Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof), Elmore James (Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast), Tony Perry (Broadway's Five Guys Named Moe) and Daniella Rabbani (NTF's Amid Falling Walls.) Conceived in 2010 by NYTF Artistic Director Zalman Mlotek, the show is accompanied by multimedia imagery and video curated by Motl Didner that reflects the ongoing need for unity and healing. The musical ensemble includes Brian Glassman, Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch, and Matt Temkin with music direction by Mlotek. 

Immediately following the concert will be a talkback with the cast on the genesis and creation of the show as well as a presentation by a respected academic from University of Pittsburgh's History department about jazz and the collaboration between Black and Jewish musicians in the Hill. 

Soul To Soul will be staged on Saturday night, Feb. 17 at the historic Kaufmann Center in the Hill District. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased at bethshalompgh.org.

March 3:

JGS Pittsburgh Presents:

"Bubbie, Who Are You? Finding Maiden Names"

Female relatives are difficult to trace but can be found.

Janice Sellers will introduce resources for tracing the women in your family, including family items, oral histories, federal and state census records, immigration records, vital records, religious records, journals, newspapers, legal and court records, library archives, and manuscript collections. Many of these resources are available online.

The program is on Sunday, March 3 from 1-3 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. 

"Bubbie, Who Are You?" is a collaboration between the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives. Please register online. This program is free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. To become a member of the JGS-Pittsburgh and to receive a free membership code for this program, please visit its website.

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

Janice M. Sellers is related to actor Peter Sellers and to John of Gaunt, son of a king and father of a king. At least that’s what her grandparents told her. Unfortunately, they were both wrong, but that’s why she has researched her family for 48 years and now helps others find the right pieces to fit their genealogy puzzles. She specializes in Jewish, Black, forensic, and newspaper research and has taught at local to international levels. Her site is ancestraldiscoveries.com.

through March 18:

Rodef Shalom Congregation Presents:

"The Sofer: A Tribute To My Zayde"

The Sofer is a multi-generational narrative about Pittsburgh artist Rosabel Rosalind's relationship with Zayde, her grandfather, a retired Orthodox rabbi with whom she lived for the first twelve years of her life. (He spent part of his career in Western Pennsylvania, leading Beth Samuel Jewish Center in Ambridge.) Fragmented by time and memory, the story recounts details from the years Zayde and Rosalind lived as roommates, interspersed with historical reimaginings and stark cultural observations that span past and present. 

The book follows Zayde and Rosalind, as she came of age in a Conservative Jewish household and as she continues to come to terms with her Jewishness. The Sofer is about the haunting of memory, history, and tradition in the face of a resurgence of anti-Semitism, through an intimate and inherited perspective. 

The original manuscript of The Sofer is 185 pages and is entirely hand-painted with beet juice, citing Zayde's affinity for Manischewitz brand borscht and the complexities of diasporic Jewishness. Sofer, translates to a Jewish scribe of ancient texts, and it is also Rosalind's maternal name; her Zayde’s last name. Thus she transcribed the familial, ancestral, and historical, using an untraditional hand-made ink, per scribal ritual, with a combination of painting and comic techniques and specific Sofer lettering of Rosalind's design.

Community

The Fine Fellowship

Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center announce the inaugural Fine Fellowship for the study of the October 27 attack. This $4000 fellowship will provide funding for a scholar to travel to Pittsburgh and work with local materials related to the attack and its aftermath and to engage with the local community.

A committee of representatives from the Jewish studies faculty of University of Pittsburgh, the Rauh Jewish Archives, and the 10.27 Healing Partnership will consider the applications. They will offer the award to an outstanding scholar whose research promises to make excellent use of local materials, stands to gain from thoughtful conversations with the people of Pittsburgh, and will prove instructive to local community-members seeking to better understand the contexts and repercussions of the October 27 attack.

Applications due March 15, 2024. For more information, click link below.

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.

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