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Blogs Categories: Jewish American History

Blogs Categories: Jewish American History

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Roman Totenberg: A Symphony of a Life

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Roman Totenberg's papers at the Library tell the story of his amazing 101-year life. Born in Poland in 1911, he was a child prodigy on the violin, playing street corners in Russia to help his family survive famine. He returned to Poland, became a star while a teenager, eventually fled the Holocaust and became one of the 20th century's greatest violinists, living the rest of his life in the United States. He was as renowned as a teacher as he was a performer, and his three children -- Nina, Amy, Jill -- each went on to prominent careers.

Posted in: Timeless

Exploring Buildings by Louis I. Kahn in the Historic American Buildings Survey

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The following is a guest post by Ryan Brubacher, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. One of my most favorite rabbit holes to find myself in as a librarian is the deep and wonderful collection of the combined Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), collectively …

Posted in: Picture This

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

American Yiddish Radio

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Yiddish was the common language of Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. It is a German-based language thought to have developed in the 9th century. While all aspects of Yiddish culture, including literature, theater, film, recording, and journalism, existed in robust and diverse forms wherever Ashkenazi Jews lived, it was in …

Posted in: Folklife Today

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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

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

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