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Blogs Categories: Jewish American History

Blogs Categories: Jewish American History

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Leichtentritt: From Nazi Germany to the Nation’s Capital

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Before the dawn of the Third Reich, Jewish scholar Hugo Leichtentritt encountered three fellow musicologists: Oscar Sonneck, Carl Engel, and Harold Spivacke. Each of these men would assume the role of Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and be instrumental to the preservation of the oeuvres of international artists, including Leichtentritt.

Posted in: In The Muse

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The House I Live In: Philip Roth’s America

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For Jewish American Heritage Month, Manuscript Division curator Barbara Bair explores Philip Roth’s novel "The Plot Against America" (and its recent television adaptation). Set between 1940 and 1942, when Roth himself was a child, the novel examines the status of being Jewish and being American in a particularly perilous time period in American and world history.

Posted in: From the Catbird Seat

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Sholem Aleichem, The Yiddish Mark Twain

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For Jewish American Heritage Month, a guest post by research specialist Susan Garfinkel explores the legacy of author Sholem Aleichem, sometimes called "the Yiddish Mark Twain," whose stories of Tevye the dairyman inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Drawing on items from the Library's collections, including newspapers, playscripts, poems, and recordings, she looks at Aleichem's time in America, and delves into the question of whether the two famous humorists ever met.

Posted in: From the Catbird Seat

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The Devotions of David Diamond

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This blog post celebrates composer David Diamond's contributions to the enrichment of Jewish synagogue music. The Music Division of the Library of Congress is home to the David Diamond Collection.

Posted in: In The Muse