Collection Guide: United Jewish Appeal - Federation of New York

Over the course of the four-year UJA-Federation project, thousands of pages and unique objects were digitized and made available online, thanks to the professional collaboration of AJHS archivists and the skilled technicians in the Center for Jewish History's Digital Imaging and Metadata and Discovery labs. This work made a variety of items available to our online researchers, including oral history interviews, photographs, films, scrapbooks, and a plethora of administrative and ephemeral documents.

Six films have been digitized that were created by UJA, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies or the UJA-Federation Joint Campaign, prior to the 1986 merger with United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York.

Highlights of this digital collection include:

• "A Journey into Life" (1960), narrated by Sid Caesar, describing a life-saving operation performed in a Federation-supported hospital
• "At Any Given Moment" (1972), where Alan King narrates a television broadcast of the many services and programs supported throughout the metropolitan New York area by Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York.
• Three short films that include information on the YM-YWHA of Williamsburg and Long Island Jewish Hospital
• Highlights from the 1973 Dial-a-thon campaign
• A film (missing its sound component) that was used for a UJA-Federation Joint Campaign news release that documents a 1949 mission to Israel by leaders from UJA of Greater New York and gives the viewer a glimpse of Israel a year after independence.

To view this digital collection, click HERE.

The minutes and related material of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities, United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, and the UJA-Federation of New York represent the largest collection of material documenting the events, agencies, campaigns, resolutions, and deliberations of the philanthropic organization and its predecessors, digitized and available online.

This digital collection is organized into three groupings:

UJA-Federation

1. Board of Trustees, Minutes, range from the establishment of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York in 1916 through its merger with the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities in 1944 to become the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies until its merger with United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York in 1986;
2. Board of Directors presided over both the Domestic and Overseas Affairs of UJA-Federation. The Minutes begin with the merger between Federation and United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York in 1986 and continue through some organizational restructuring in 1992;  
3. The Executive Committee consisted of a subsection of the Federation Board of Trustees members: made up of officers, including the current President, President elect, and all ex-Presidents, as well as agency representatives and trustees at large. Given its smaller size, the Committee met to discuss, evaluate, and endorse policy and resolutions in lieu of full Board meeting. Executive Committee, Minutes, coincide with the establishment of the UJA-Federation Joint Campaign in 1973 through the merger between Federation and United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York in 1986.

United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York

Small but significant collection of governance documents from the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York. The digitized material includes minutes and proceedings from the governing bodies and boards of the United Jewish Appeal, from 1966-1986, prior to their 1986 merger with the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and the UJA-Federation Joint Campaign.

In 1999, The National United Jewish Appeal merged with the Council of Jewish Federations to become the Jewish Federations of North America.  Currently, the Jewish Federations of North America does not have a corporate archive available for researchers to contact regarding the National United Jewish Appeal and its connection to the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York. The resulting paucity of archival material available to researchers relating to United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York and National United Jewish Appeal, as a consequence, means that these digitized governance files represent the largest collection on the organization open and accessible for research.

Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities

The Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities (BFJC) was formed in 1909 and in 1944 merged into the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City to form the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York. Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities supported local Jewish social service agencies with funding, administrative and other professional aid. Agencies in the Brooklyn Federation included Beth Moses Hospital, Brooklyn Free Loan Association, Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum, First Hebrew Day Nursery, Hebrew Educational Society, Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, and numerous neighborhood YM-YWHAs.

The digitized materials contain Brooklyn Federation minutes, 1909-1944, annual reports, 1910-1920, and a 1938 Study on the Jewish Community Centers affiliated with Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities.

UJA-Federation of New York's Oral History Project was started in 1981 by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and continued through the merger between Federation and the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York until 2004. The project eventually grew to include over 200 oral histories, where volunteer leadership and professional staff were recruited and interviewed, some repeatedly, until their stories were captured more completely. Interviews were generally conducted after active involvement had ended, when perspective on their contributions would have been possible.

A note about the oral histories:

• When possible both the interview recording and transcript have been made available.
• The interview participants range from Nathan Ancell to Gary Zucker and feature perspectives from many walks of life, anyone from business executives to civic leaders to social agency executives to politicians to television producers.
• The digitized oral histories not only provide a unique, multifaceted history of the UJA-Federation, but also many interesting details on the 20th Century history of New York City and American Jewry.

The interviews of the Oral History Project have been digitized and are available online HERE.

The photographs digitized for the UJA processing project are organized into two groups:

Public Relations Photographs

Photographs were selected from the Public Relations Departments of Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, UJA-Federation Joint Campaign, and UJA-Federation of New York. The photographs include visual information related to historical events, affiliated agencies and institutions, executives and officers, and campaigns. Many of the photographs were used within Public Relations publications and mailings.

Legacy Photographs

Through a special arrangement with UJA-Federation of New York, a unique selection of photographs from the UJA-Federation Marketing and Communications Department was digitized at the Center for Jewish History. Digital copies of photographs are available for research. The physical photographs are not part of the larger UJA-Federation of New York collection.

Digitized material for this project was created or distributed by the Public Relations Departments of United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, and UJA-Federation Joint Campaign for the purposes of outreach, education, and fundraising.

The items selected demonstrate the organization’s ability to assess and anticipate the needs of the Jewish community within New York and Israel. To accomplish this, they used a range of studies and evaluations of the New York metropolitan area population, agencies and the patrons served; annual reports; and financial analysis.

Highlights include:

• A scrapbook created by Isidore Sobeloff recounting the work of the Public Affairs Department in 1929
• A series of recommendations for building construction and service development in post-World War II New York City from the Building Fund Committee
• A compilation of primary documents regarding the merger between Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York.

Selections of brochures and programs can be viewed HERE.

Selections of reports can be viewed HERE.

Digitized audio recordings from the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York collection include material selected from United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, UJA-Federation Joint Campaign, and Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York.

Recordings were selected first on the basis of scarcity, such as recording without an extant transcript or correlating paper in the archives, and then on the basis of subject matter and its connection to the philanthropic organization. Original formats of the digitized material include reel-to-reel tapes, vinyl records, and audiocassettes.

To interact with this digital collection, click HERE.