Memoirs: Mollie Brunwasser
Anne Unger Greenberg on Gene Kelly
The Gusky Orphanage
Calendar: Lag B'Omer, John Kane, Jewish Names with Warren Blatt
Community News
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Memoirs:
“Memories of Yesteryears”
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Volume 1 and Volume 57 of "Memories of Yesteryears" by Mollie Brunwasser.
—Brunwasser Family Papers [MSS 502]
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All year, we’ve been featuring memoirs by Jewish people from Western Pennsylvania. One goal of this initiative is to make these stories more widely available. So far, we’ve shared more than 20 memoirs in this newsletter, and in each case we’ve included online links to the complete text of these memoirs.
For this next memoir, that’s not feasible.
It’s just too big.
Mollie Brunwasser’s “Memoires of Yesteryears” unfurls across more than 24,000 pages in 57 volumes. It is the longest book in the entire archive.
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Brunwasser came from one of the first Jewish families from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to settle here. Her parents Frank and Bertha Brunwasser helped found Poale Zedeck Congregation in the early 1880s.
After a few years of odd jobs, Mollie Brunwasser (1889-1989) was hired at Frank & Seder Department Store in 1915. She stayed with the company for the next 30 years—her entire professional life. In honor of her retirement in April 1945, store management gave her a U.S. government bond, a lifelong store discount, and a $50 monthly pension.
In the early 1950s, looking to fill her free time, Mollie decided to write a memoir. Sitting before her typewriter, she wrote all her memories growing up in the Hill District as a twin and a child of six, as well as her reflections on life in the city at the turn of the century. She used whatever paper she had. Sometimes she added illustrations. Sometimes she pasted memorabilia onto the pages.
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Page from Mollie Brunwasser scrapbooks featuring photo booth photographs of Mollie and May Brunwasser and older photograph of Brunwasser family with annotations.
—Brunwasser Family Papers [MSS 502]
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Year after year, decade after decade, Mollie wrote and wrote. Inevitably she ran out of memories. Her book gradually became a journal. She recorded her daily activities. She transcribed articles she had read and letters she had sent.
No memoir can capture every detail of a life, but this one comes close. The very act of writing seems to have given Mollie life by giving her purpose.
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"Memories of Yesteryears" Vol. 54, p23,826
—Brunwasser Family Papers [MSS 502]
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On page 23,826, we find Mollie sitting at her typewriter. It is March 15, 1974, her 85th birthday. She has been writing for nearly 25 years.
A neighbor knocks. Mollie invites her in. “We chatted for a few minutes. She handed me a birthday greeting and as she was ready to leave she picked up the card that I layed aside and she inserted a $1.00 Bill.”
Thinking about what to do with that dollar, Mollie decides to treat herself to a fish sandwich at a nearby church offering Lenten special. She orders—as she writes, typos and all—a “tasty meal consisting of fried fish on a bun, French Fried potatoes, cold slaw, fish sauce, ketchup spread envelope to be poured over the fish or potatoes and a nice piece of lemon custard pie and two cup-filling of coffee. It took three women to serve me.”
Mollie spends a few pages recounting the pleasures of her day. She ends by transcribing a note to her great nieces, thanking them for sending her candy to enjoy on her birthday. "It was as sweet as the Giver."
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Next week: Uniontown
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.
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New Collection:
Anne Unger Greenberg Papers on Gene Kelly [MSS 1174]
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"Beth Shalom Sisterhood Presents: Juvenile Follies," program cover, 1934
—Anne Unger Greenberg Papers on Gene Kelly [MSS 1174]
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Anne Unger Greenberg was active in the Congregation Beth Shalom Sisterhood in the 1930s. For many years, she chaired its annual kirmess—a springtime costumed dance recital for children in the congregation
In that capacity, she hired Gene Kelly to oversee dance classes for children in the congregation. He stayed with the congregation for eight years and eventually developed a deep and meaningful relationship with the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill.
Kelly and Unger maintained a friendly correspondence for the remainder of their lives, into the early 1990s.
The Anne Unger Greenberg Papers on Gene Kelly [MSS 1174] contains correspondence, programs and newspaper clippings documenting Gene Kelly’s early career as a dance instructor in Pittsburgh in the 1930s, as well as efforts by local groups in the 1970s and 1980s to celebrate and memorialize his ties to Pittsburgh.
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Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:
J. M. Gusky Hebrew Orphanage
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Souvenir postcard showing “Gusky Orphanage & Home and Bertha Rauh Cohen Memorial.”
—from General Postcard Collection
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The J. M. Gusky Hebrew Orphanage and Home of Western Pennsylvania was a Jewish orphanage in Allegheny, Pa. It was established in 1890 with a $30,000 initial gift, $1,000 annual commitment, and land purchase from Esther Gusky, one of the owners of Gusky’s Department Store. Prior to the creation of the Gusky Orphanage, Jewish children in Western Pennsylvania without adult care were either sent to Jewish orphanages in other cities or to Christian orphanages within the region. With the rise of foster care and adoption, enrollment declined at the Gusky Orphanage. The facility closed in 1943.
Our entry for the Gusky Orphanage includes donation letters, a program from a 1911 addition, and a report commissioned by the orphanage around 1950.
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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. |
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Calendar: Past and Present |
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Young Men's Zionist Association of Pittsburgh advertisement, announcing upcoming Lag B'Omer evening dance at Duquesne Garden, 1918.
—from Jewish Criterion, April 26, 1918, p 21
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Lag B'Omer is a springtime Jewish holiday, named for its occurrence on the 33rd day of the "Omer" period between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot.
"But," as the local American Jewish Outlook noted in 1936, "just as through the centuries one city was built on top of another more ancient than itself, so in Jewish history, the various days of the year came to be associated with events coming on the same day or during the same period although many centuries apart." Lag B'Omer has come to commemorate various markers and milestones throughout Jewish history, such as the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochi and the cessation of a plague afflicting the students of Rabbi Akiva.
The day is closely associated with students and has often been celebrated in religious schools with plays, dances, and hikes. Some events were more social than scholarly. As seen above, the Young Men's Zionist Association of Pittsburgh held a Lag B'Omer dance at the former Duquesne Garden in 1918.
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Opening May 21:
“Pittsburgh’s John Kane:
The Life & Art of an American Workman”
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"Crossing the Junction," John Kane |
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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 opens May 21 and runs through the rest of the year.
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May 22:
JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Warren Blatt
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Learn why “Mordechai Yehuda” is also “Mortka Leib” is also “Max.” In "Jewish Given Names," Blatt will provide an introduction to Jewish given names (first names), focusing on practical issues for genealogical research. Our ancestors each had many different given names and nicknames, in various languages and alphabets— this can make Jewish genealogical research difficult. This presentation will teach you about the history and patterns of Jewish first names, and how to recognize your ancestors’ names in genealogical sources.
Topics include: Religious and secular names; origins of given names; variants, nicknames and diminutives; double names (unrelated pairs, kinnui, Hebrew/Yiddish translations); patronymics; name equivalents; Ashkenazic naming traditions (naming of children); statistics on the distribution and popularity of given names in various regions and times; spelling issues; Polish and Russian declensions; interpretation of names in documents; and the Americanization of immigrant Jewish names: adaptations and transformations.
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.
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Warren Blatt is the former Managing Director of JewishGen (www.jewishgen.org), the primary Internet site for Jewish genealogy. Blatt has over 40 years of research experience with Russian and Polish Jewish records, and is the author of the JewishGen FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Jewish Genealogy, and many other JewishGen InfoFiles. He is the author of Resources for Jewish Genealogy in the Boston Area; and co-author (with Gary Mokotoff) of Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy. He was the Chair of the 15th International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy. In 2004, he was awarded the IAJGS’ Lifetime Achievement Award in Jerusalem.
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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.
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Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project |
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The home page of the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project website, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. The redesigned website is launching this month. |
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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.
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[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.
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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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