Thornburg Country Club
Brownsville to Brownsville
JGS Present: Michael Waas
Cemetery database offline
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Thornburg Country Club clubhouse, 1929
—Jewish Criterion, April 26, 1929
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In the thick of the glittery 1920s, a group of guys decided to make a play at Westmoreland Country Club. They bought the old Thornburg club house in Crafton for cash and leased the accompanying 9-hole golf course for 10 years.
The club grew quickly, at least by its own accounts. It started out in 1925 with about 35 members. By 1928, it expected to hit its quota of 150 members.
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Announce for a "New Jewish Golf Club"
—from Jewish Criterion, April 24, 1925
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Just looking at the names of the directors and committee chairs listed in the Criterion, the creation of Thornburg Country Club may have reflected the divide in the community between German Jews and Eastern European Jews.
Westmoreland Country Club was closely associated with the Concordia Club and Rodef Shalom Congregation. Thornburg Country Club was closely associated with the Mercantile Club and with no congregation in particular.
Thornburg Country Club and the Mercantile Club even announced plans in 1929 to merge, creating the new Thornburg Country and Town Club.
Thornburg Country Club struggled during the Great Depression. In 1933, in an attempt to hold on to members, it eliminated its $250 initiation fee and reduced its $125 annual dues to $50 (plus $10 for wives of members).
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An advertisement announcing new management at Thornburg Country Club—
from Jewish Criterion, June 14, 1935
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A little later that year, the club eliminated all social affairs as a cost-saving measure. But it launched the Thornburg Bridge Club at the Morrowfield Apartments on Murray Avenue, as a way to keep members engaged during the winter months, when the golf course was closed.
The efforts weren't enough, though.
Thornburg Country Club was sold in 1935, right about when its 10-year lease on the golf course expired. It became the Crafton Public Golf Course and faded from local Jewish history. If any archival materials survive, they have yet to be found.
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All this year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting stories of Jewish club life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate records of a local Jewish club, or just chat about clubs, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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Brownsville to Brownsville |
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Rabbi Hershel Pfeffer completes a Torah scroll at Temple Ohave Israel in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on May 24, 1964. |
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While reviewing photographs recently, I was told that the man seen here is Rabbi Hershel Pfeffer. Instantly, the meaning of the image was transformed in my mind. What had been a generic Jewish scene — a scribe completing a Torah — became heartwarmingly specific. Here was a beloved local spiritual leader, long before most of us knew him.
Rabbi Pfeffer passed away earlier this year at 98. When he arrived in Western Pennsylvania in 1944, he was a 22-year-old bachelor, a child of the Lower East Side and a graduate of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
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August 29: JGS Presents: Michael Waas |
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Cornerstone laying ceremony for the Irene Kaufmann Center at the corner of Fobres and Murray, 1958—from Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Photographs, MSP 389. |
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Sephardic heritage and history can be presented in radically different ways in different places. In “Muestro Yerusha: Jewish Heritage and Identity in the Ottoman Empire," Michael Waas will discuss three heritage projects in the former Ottoman Empire—Salonika, Izmir and Tire—which have each taken a different approach to the task. Each of these cities has vibrant and active Jewish heritage projects. However, their shared history as Ottoman Jewish communities and the fact that they each have ongoing projects is where their similarities end. Learn about these communities and how others see us.
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Michael Waas is a heritage professional, specializing in site research and evaluation, and archival research. He is the co-administrator of the Sephardic Diaspora group on Facebook and also volunteers his time as the anthropologist and historian of the Avotaynu Genetic Census of the Jewish People Project.
Waas received his Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology with a specialization in Historical Archaeology from New College of Florida. The subject of his Senior Thesis was “The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis of the Seminole People of Florida.” He received his Master’s Degree from the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa and the subject of his MA thesis was “Istorya i oy: A comparative study on the Development of Jewish Heritage of the former Ottoman Empire.” He received the Gaon Prize for Outstanding M.A. Thesis research for the academic year 2017-2018 of the Moshe David Gaon Center for Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) Culture as well as the Prize for Research into the Heritage of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry, awarded by the Ben Zvi Institute and the Israeli Ministry of Education, for the year 2017-2018.
He has presented papers at multiple international conferences on Sephardic Studies, most recently, the Terras de Sefarad conference in Bragança, Portugal, and the annual Society for Sephardic Studies conference in Lisbon, Portugal, both in June 2019.
This program is made possible by support from the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation.
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The Western Pennsylvania Jewish Cemetery Database is currently offline. We are working to resolve the issue and hope to have it operational again soon.
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[IMAGE: Marian Schreiber and employees at the Schreiber Trucking Company, c.1943—from Schreiber Family Papers and Photographs, MSS 846.]
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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. |
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Plan a Visit
Senator John Heinz History Center
1212 Smallman Street
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15222
412-454-6000
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A proud affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Senator John Heinz History Center is the largest history museum in Pennsylvania and presents American history with a Western Pennsylvania connection.
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