"Only a century and a half has passed since the first contacts between a handful of Jews and the frontier outpost that eventually grew into the city of Buffalo; yet their subsequent relationship exemplifies every significant facet of Jewish life in America. The story begins with the attempt by the colorful Moredcai M. Noah to found his Jewish asylum, Ararat, in western New York, and it concludes with a description of a populous, self-aware, unified community striking out for the suburbs. The authors, themselves citizens of Buffalo, have succeeded in making their story alive, vibrant, panoramic. Perhaps this is due to the grandstand seat from which they have witnessed the energy and vision that have characterized the ultimate development of the community. It is also likely that their success in bringing the Buffalo Jewish story so vividly to life is a direct result of their method. For these professors chose to describe the community by describing the men and women who created it, against the background of the national and international socio-religious forces that shaped its growth. Its Geist is evoked by introducing the reader to the inner qualities of the people who shaped it. This history of the Jews of Buffalo thus differs substantially from virtually all similar accounts of other American-Jewish communities. More than any of the others it is written as a synthesis: between the American environment and the world-wide Jewish heritage of the successive waves of immigrants, among the various institutions as step by step they combined to create a sense of community, and, above all, among the leaders and personalities whom the book describes in considerable detail. From Ararat to Suburbia is filled with interesting and sharply-drawn vignettes Each of these pen portraits, emerging out of the subject's origin and New World status, lays bare his hopes, his strivings and his manner of expressing them. In one sense, of course, this is a success story. American-Jewish history altogether, and especially the history of its medium-sized communities, records the rapid advances made by individual men and women who thereupon displayed remarkable community consciousness and a characteristically Jewish sense of common destiny. The Jews of both Buffalo and the United States have been portrayed as largely the subjects, rather than the objects, of modern historical forces. This volume stresses the serious social, religious and cultural problems that Jews have had to face on the Niagara Frontier. Our authors make these clear, and Buffalo's experience forms a prototype for Jewish communities elsewhere. Hence, the treatment in this volume transcends provincial narrowness. It is not just another account of another American-Jewish community. It is the epic of the Jew in American civilization." --

The first comprehensive history of the oldest national religious Jewish women's organization in the United States. "A comprehensive history of the oldest religious Jewish women's organization in the US, exploring the council's uniquely female approach to such issues as immigrant aid, relationships between German and Eastern European Jews, and the power struggle between the Reform movement and more traditional interpretations of Judaisms." —Reference and Research Book News "Rogow clearly has mastered the history of American women and the history of the Jewish people in America, and she has laid out the story of one of the most significant and certainly enduring Jewish women's organizations." —American Historical Review

Jewish community life in Buffalo began in 1847 with the founding of Temple Beth El. A dominantly German Jewish community transformed in the 1880s as Eastern European Jews settled around William Street. Intense religious and commercial vibrancy emerged with new synagogues alongside Jewish grocery stores, kosher butchers, clothiers, and more. From this east side milieu, lyricist Jack Yellen (Happy Days are Here Again) and composer Harold Arlen (Over the Rainbow) emerged as part of a new generation shaping local and national American life. On the west side, Temple Beth Zion, the Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service, and Rosa Coplon Jewish Old Folks Home built institutions on and around Delaware Avenue. Jewish areas in Humboldt, North Buffalo, Kenmore, Amherst, Getzville, and Williamsville developed over time. Camp Lakeland continued earlier traditions of summer camping. Throughout the 20th century, Jewish Buffalonians made their marks as entrepreneurs, distinguished lawyers, award-winning writers, and Nobel Prize scientists, among other careers. The Jewish Community of Greater Buffalo showcases Buffalo and Niagara Falls Jewry over the last two centuries.

To date, Jews and Jewish contributions to the early development of Canada and the British colonies have been marginalized in Canadian history. In Search Out the Land Sheldon Godfrey and Judith Godfrey begin to redress this situation by illustrating and an

Jonathan Sarna's meticulously documented centennial history presents the personalities and the controversies, the struggles and the achievements behind a century of publishing by America's foremost publisher of Jewish books in English. Sarna's engaging blend of anecdote and analysis contextualizes the Jewish Publication Society within American Jewry's evolving social, political, and cultural history. He demonstrates that the society has been a major factor. Sarna recounts the inspired struggle of the Jewish Publication Society's founders, a group of genteel Philadelphia philanthropists including Cyrus Adler and Mayer Sulzberger, who believed fervently in the need to educate their immigrant coreligionists with Jewish books in the new vernacular. He also tells the story of Henrietta Szold, best known for her later achievements as the founder of Hadassah and Youth Aliyah. Szold worked doggedly for twenty-three years as the society's first editor until a shattered love for a JPS author became the catalyst that led her to Palestine and Zionist leadership. Here too are fascinating accounts of the long deliberations and intense work that produced the authoritative JPS Bible translations of 1917 and 1985, translations acceptable to all major branches of Judaism. Sarna also recounts the controversy surrounding the 1973 publication of The Jewish Catalog, a project developed by the bold JPS editor Chaim Potok. The Catalog, embodying the spirit of the Jewish counterculture, not only became the best-selling JPS book after the Bible, but it also showed that JPS could meet the challenge of a new generation as it moved toward its second century.

The first book-length treatment of how synagogues are financed in the United States

Yakar L'Mordecai commemorates forty years of Rabbi Waxman's service to Temple Israel of Great Neck; it was initiated by his grateful congregants and carried through by his colleagues and friends. It mirrors his interests in and contributions to Jewish scholarship and thought, and is divided into four sections, each pertaining to an area in which Rabbi Waxman has been involved. Part I is a retrospective of Rabbi Waxman's career in the rabbinate and in Jewish scholarship; Part II, on Jewish thought, contains articles which reflect the honoree's broad knowledge of the topic, from Biblical studies to contemporary theology. Part III deals with Jewish-Christian relations, as well as the position of Jews in various parts of the world in their relations with the surrounding cultures, and Part IV with American Judaism. Along with the many other contributions, this volume contains articles by Rabbi Waxman's later father and wife and one by his son, Rabbi Jonathan Waxman.

Winner of the 2023 Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Award Essays from a prolific career that challenge and overturn traditional narratives of southern Jewish history Mark K. Bauman, one of the foremost scholars of southern Jewish history working today, has spent much of his career, as he puts it, “rewriting southern Jewish history” in ways that its earliest historians could not have envisioned or anticipated, and doing so by specifically targeting themes and trends that might not have been readily apparent to those scholars. A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility features essays collected from over a forty-year career, including a never-before-published article. The prevailing narrative in southern Jewish history tends to emphasize the role of immigrant Jews as merchants in small southern towns and their subsequent struggles and successes in making a place for themselves in the fabric of those communities. Bauman offers assessments that go far beyond these simplified frameworks and draws upon varieties of subject matter, time periods, locations, tools, and perspectives over three decades of writing and scholarship. A New Vision of Southern Jewish History contains Bauman’s studies of Jewish urbanization, acculturation and migration, intra- and inter-group relations, economics and business, government, civic affairs, transnational diplomacy, social services, and gender—all complicating traditional notions of southern Jewish identity. Drawing on role theory as informed by sociology, psychology, demographics, and the nature and dynamics of leadership, Bauman traverses a broad swath—often urban—of the southern landscape, from Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore through Atlanta, New Orleans, Galveston, and beyond the country to Europe and Israel. Bauman’s retrospective volume gives readers the opportunity to review a lifetime of work in a single publication as well as peruse newly penned introductions to his essays. The book also features an “Additional Readings” section designed to update the historiography in the essays.

Reform movements in Buffalo during the 1890s are described in terms of the way the city's traditional leaders responded to the forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Thorough documentation provides the reader with details of the diverse ways that prominent Buffalonians tried to solve their contemporary problems.

This is an annual printed issue for writers who specialize in local histories of New York State. Many of your local historical societies don't have the resources to provide a platform for publishing your local history article. Well, we do.