A history of congregations throughout the Lower East Side: "..growing immigrant populations inspired new congregations that would best represent their own customs. Inside these new synagogues, the laity embraced experimentation and debate, using its power to work through the challenges of practicing Judaism in a new land."
"In response to the massive waves of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, leaders of the German-Jewish community in New York City founded the rather forbiddingly named Industrial Removal Office (IRO) to relocate new arrivals from teeming cities on the East Coast to Jewish communities in smaller cities and towns. Hoping to meet the industrial demands of an expanding nation, the IRO would secure jobs and arrange for room, board, and transportation."
Jews in the Mines: The Industrial Removal Office Contends with Butte, Montana
"In January 1904, Henry Jonas of Butte, Montana, wrote to the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) in New York, asking for their help sending a man named A. Pickholz from New York in order to work in Butte’s booming copper mines, at the behest of “Mr. Max Fried of this city.” The IRO existed to coordinate just such Jewish labor migrations out of densely populated Jewish cities like New York and into places like Butte, with the aid of local Jews like Fried to employ them and Jonas to coordinate and vouch for those employment offers. The New York office quickly promised their assistance."
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Included in on this page are videos and blog posts from the Center for Jewish History. These posts and videos contain more information on the histories of migration and immigration that appear in our partners' collections and help to showcase some of those collection items and narratives.
You can find more educational content on a variety of topics on our website through our online exhibitions, podcasts, and blog posts.
Eliyana R. Adler in conversation with Debórah Dwork about her book, the forgotten story of 200,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust as refugees stranded in remote corners of the USSR.
Between 1940 and 1946, about 200,000 Jewish refugees from Poland lived and toiled in the harsh Soviet interior. They endured hard labor, bitter cold, and extreme deprivation. But out of reach of the Nazis, they escaped the fate of millions of their coreligionists in the Holocaust. Survival on the Margins is the first comprehensive account in English of their experiences.
This program took place on March 3, 2021.
Emily Garber, professional genealogist and Jewish genealogy blogger, focuses on a rarely discussed Jewish emigration experience, the journey of Eastern European Jews from their homes to the ships between 1880-1914. Garber answers questions including: What were the emigration requirements? Where, how, and from whom did they purchase passage? How did the emigrants know how to get from their shtetls to the ports? Did they receive any help along the way?
This event took place on July 23, 2024.
Historians long assumed that Jews in the US. were emancipated upon arrival, yet this claim has occluded ongoing struggles for emancipation that endured throughout the 20th century and that placed Jews in contingent relationships with other groups seeking the full rights of citizenship. Bereft of the history of American Jewish emancipation, a whole field of study has been perilously isolated from modern Jewish history and from U.S. history. In this talk, Lila Corwin Berman (Temple University) examines history and the consequences of its neglect.
The program was been made possible by the generous support of Sid and Ruth Lapidus, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
This event took place on February 21, 2023.