Vol. 3
No. 27
In this issue...
Memoir: "The Gambler's Daughter"

Albert Hanauer letters

Shaaray Tefilah Congregation

Calendar: the Downtown Shul, Family Clubs, The Story of Our Lives, DNA

Community News
Memoir:
"The Gambler's Daughter"
"The Gambler's Daughter: A Personal and Social History," by Annette B. Dunlap, Excelsior Editions, Albany, N.Y., 2012.
Every family has its issues. 

And so, when it comes to writing out the story of a life, each author must decide how much to reveal to readers. In most cases, consequential details are left off the page for the sake of preserving family peace.

But what happens when the core of the story is hard to discuss?

The title of Annette B. Dunlap’s 2012 memoir “The Gambler’s Daughter” refers to two women. Dunlap’s father was a pathological gambler, and her maternal grandfather was a successful numbers runner. Dunlap and her mother were both the daughters of "gamblers," as it were.

To make sense of these two men, Dunlap wraps her memories inside social history. Each vignette from her childhood in Squirrel Hill in the 1960s is followed by research. How did Jewish communities deal with gambling in centuries past? How has the medical establishment understood the compulsion to bet and to wager?
One scene has Dunlap recalling a time in her youth when she was forced to clean the basement of the family’s new home on Beacon Street. Her immigrant grandfather was her supervisor for the day, sitting on the basement steps overseeing her work. He had come to Pittsburgh decades earlier from the Russia, during the days when leaving that country meant escaping pogroms.

“Somewhere in the year before the move [to Beacon Street], I had learned about Communist Russia and all of the horrors of totalitarianism in my Social Studies class," Dunlap writes. "My precocious mind made a connection, and in a fit of frustration at my grandfather’s insistence that I finish my job correctly, I declared that I now knew for certain that he had been born in Russia because he was acting like a dictator. Surprisingly, he and my mother were amused by my outburst, but had I known the full story, which I learned when I was older, I would never had tied my grandfather’s authoritative behavior to the then-current government of the land of his birth.”

By revisiting her childhood memoires through an adult understanding of the world, Dunlap develops a theory about Jewish history. She ties gambling within Jewish communities to generations of prejudicial economic policy and social conditions against the Jews, both in Europe and in the United States. Gambling might seem, on the surface, to be about money. But really the winnings are just a proxy for a sense of status and self-worth. She calls her book an “effort to acquit, vindicate, vouch for, and show merit” to her family by presenting their private sturggles within a larger, societal context.
In searching for these sociological underpinnings, Dunlap achieves what many memoirists seek: not simply to record the past but to explain it to herself.
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.
The Albert M. Hanauer Letters [2019.0110] is a small, fascinating collection. It contains two letters written to Phillip Frankenberger of Charleston, W. V. by Albert M. Hanauer of Pittsburgh in December 1898, asking for information about Louis Lowenstein, also of Charleston. Lowenstein was courting Albert Hanauer’s sister Ida Hanauer and ultimately married her in 1899. The collection is an intimate peak into late 19th century social customs.
Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
Shaaray Tefilah Congregation
Photograph of former Beth David Congregation and former Shaaray Tefilah Congregation on Miller Street, c.1998.
—Gerald Sapir Records [MSS 775]
Shaaray Tefilah Congregation was an Orthodox congregation founded by immigrants from various parts the Russian Empire and known locally as “the Russian shul.” The congregation was created in 1906, when Rabbi Moshe Shimon Sivitz meditated a merger between Beth David Congregation and Beth Zedeck Congregation. The new congregation immediately occupied the recently completed Beth David synagogue at 21-23 Miller Street in the Hill District. It relocated to 5741 Bartlett Street in Squirrel Hill in the late 1940s. The Bartlett Street synagogue was later the home of the Kollel Beis Yitzchok.

Our entry for Shaaray Tefilah Congregation includes a photograph of its original synagogue on Miller Street and board of directors meeting minutes from 1969 through 1981.
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.
Calendar
TODAY:
The Downtown Shul: A Hidden Gem
Groundbreaking for Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's Colwell Street synagogue.
—Beth Hamedrash Hagodol-Beth Jacob Records [MSS 438]
The sanctuary of the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol-Beth Jacob synagogue—lovingly known as “The Downtown Shul”—is one of the under-appreciated architectural gems of Pittsburgh. Although the current building is relatively new, the sanctuary integrates elements from two earlier versions of the synagogue, each demolished during urban renewal activities.

The new sanctuary elegantly preserves the legacy of Jewish life at the intersection of Downtown and Uptown with the Lower Hill District, an area once home to tens of thousands of Jewish people, dozens of Jewish congregations, and hundreds of Jewish organizations, clubs, and businesses.

In this presentation for Doors Open Pittsburgh, Beth Hamedrash Hagodol-Beth Jacob Congregation President Ira Frank and Rauh Jewish Archives Director Eric Lidji will use historic materials to unveil the 150-year history of this sanctuary.
July 12:
The Family Clubs of Squirrel Hill
The members of the KA-EL Family Society at an unidentified gathering. Some of the faces were removed to be used in other purposes, and handwritten names fill the resulting holes.
—from Katz and Elinoff Papers and Photographs [MSS 1130]
Family clubs were a defining feature of the Ashkenazi Jewish experience in the United States in the 20th century. These clubs had members, officers, dues, meetings, minutes, newsletters, reunions, and programs. What made them different from any other club was their membership: everyone was related. 

In this program for the Squirrel Hill Historical Society, the Rauh Jewish Archives will use a newly created database of more than 110 clubs from Western Pennsylvania to consider the history and culture of the dozens of Jewish family clubs based throughout the Squirrel Hill area in the 20th century.

For more information, email sqhillhist@shhsoc.org.
July 20:
The Story of Our Lives: Why Tell Family Stories
Whether you’re a seasoned genealogist or simply the keeper of your family stories, the Heinz History Center’s new programming series, “The Story of Our Lives,” promises to open your eyes to new ways of thinking about who you are, why your family matters, and how the work of family storytelling is essential. For the first installment, "Why Tell Family Stories," Dr. Robyn Fivush, a nationally renowned scientist, and Njaimeh Njie, one of Pittsburgh’s most engaging artists and multimedia producers, will discuss the many ways that telling family stories can positively impact people, families, and society. 

This hybrid program will take place on Tuesday, July 20 at 7 p.m. at the Heinz History Center. Attendees can participate either online or in person.
Dr. Robyn Fivush is a professor of psychology who studies the role of reminiscing and sharing family stories in the development of emotionally resilient children. For decades, Fivush and her Emory University colleagues have compiled data on the benefits of family stories on child wellbeing.  
 
Njaimeh Njie is an artist and multimedia producer who uses images and documents of family and neighborhood history to honor everyday experiences and spark visual gateways into the past. In discussing their work, Fivush and Njie will offer insights into the many ways that telling family stories can positively impact people and society at large. 
July 31
JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Adam Brown
The Avotaynu DNA Study is an ongoing worldwide academic collaboration of scientists, historians, genealogists and community leaders utilizing DNA to illuminate the origins and migrations of the Jewish people. Under the guidance of the Technion, the Avotaynu DNA Study has more than 8,000 participants representing all known Jewish communities from China to Curacao. Adam Brown is Project Administrator of the study. In his talk, “The Genetic Origins and Migrations of the Jewish People," he will answer DNA questions and explain how the Avotaynu study can help you understand your family origins.

The program is on Sunday, July 31 at 2:00 p.m. ET It's free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. Please register online

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.
Adam Brown is a frequent lecturer on genealogical subjects at genealogical conferences all over the world. In addition to administering the Avotaynu DNA study, he is the Managing Editor of AvotaynuOnline.com. He was National Chair of the IAJGS 2017 conference in Orlando. A strategic planner by profession, he has led numerous boards and commissions on municipal planning and finance, Jewish education, and scientific research in Israel.
Community News
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.
The 1950 Census
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.
Tell your friends!
[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.