According to the online Jewish Virtual Library [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org], there are about 5,800,000 Jews currently living in the United States—more than anywhere, including Israel (4,847,000). And New York City has the largest Jewish population (1,750,000—Miami, #2 at 535,000, doesn’t even come close). The first North American Jewish settlers arrived in New York City as a group of 23 men, women, and children in September of 1654.

Okay, so what’s my point? The Jewish community has been and continues to be an important part of the New York and U.S. communities and their history. So even if you aren’t specifically studying an important Jewish leader or community, you shouldn’t let that discourage you from studying some Jewish history. By unearthing Jewish history in the U.S., you will also unearth a great deal of American history.

You’ll want to start with the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS). This is because most of what they collect is in English, they do the most outreach to high school and undergraduate students, and they focus on American Jewish history. You can find all sorts of interesting primary source documents in addition to tons of books. You will come across personal papers, letters, manuscripts, photographs, music sheets, pamphlets, portraits, ritual objects, daguerreotypes, and institutional records of American Jewish organizations. These papers include works by some of the most important Jewish contributors to the fields of literature, science, business, politics, medicine, philanthropy, and education. You never know what you might come across. The AJHS has done work in some interesting areas, including, for example, Jewish athletes.

So what does all this mean when you actually go looking through their catalogue? It means you will find stuff like the records from the American Jewish Committee, a national Jewish defense agency that covers topics like the division of church and state, African-American and Jewish relations, the American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel, and correspondence with Jewish members of the U.S. armed services. You can find records from the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum (1878-1869), papers from the Industrial Removal Office (1899-1922) that document efforts to assimilate Jewish immigrants into American society, and records from the Jewish Student Organization written between 1908-1995. You can find materials pertaining to the administration, services, branches and schools of the Workmen’s Circle (originally the Arbeiter Ring), which was founded in 1892 as a social and cultural Jewish labor fraternal order which provided members with mutual aid and health and death benefits as well as labor support and access to socialist ideology. The Anti-Semitic Literature Collection contains anti-Semitic letters, articles, illustrations and reactions in Puck, Vanity Fair, The Judge, The Dearborn Independent, Common Sense, The Crusador, and White American, by The American Nazi Party, the Christian Educational Association, and the White Party of America, among others. The Mexican Inquisition collection (1572-1914) contains 23 procesos (transcripts of trials) of individuals accused of “Judaizing.”

By studying different family papers collections, you will get a good idea of what the lives of Jews were like throughout our nation’s past. You can learn about the Frank family, colonial merchants from England who settled in New York in the early 1700s; four generations of the Gomez family, Sephardic Jews who settled in the city in the early 1700s and whose descendents are still associated with the New York Spanish Portuguese Synagogue Shearith Israel; or the Gratz brothers, successful merchants who immigrated to Philadelphia in the mid 1700s and whose descendent, Rebecca Gratz, was probably the model for the Jewish protagonist in Scott’s Ivanhoe. The AJHS has a collection of here correspondences, articles, and poetry, including the original handwritten version of The New Colossus (“Give me your tired…”) – you know that poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. If you’re into the performing arts you might consider studying Yiddish American Theatre. Another topic of interest might be American Jewish Radio, much of which is recorded in English.

So you should start with the American Jewish Historical Society, but don’t forget the other four fine institutions that share a building with it. Although the author does not have the room to discuss their holdings in the same degree of detail as those of the AJHS, these organizations also contain a wealth of information on American Jewry that you should not e overlook.

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded in Lithuania in 1929 as a social history project. Today it focuses on preserving and sharing the history of Eastern European Jewish life, with over 350,000 volumes and over 22 million items in 12 major languages. It is the largest repository of the five organizations at the Center for Jewish History. Though a much of its holdings are in Yiddish, it also owns many holdings that are in English. YIVO has over 200 autobiographies of Jewish immigrants collected in 1942, as well as the private papers of many American Jewish writers, historians, playwrights, actors, and community leaders. Highlights of its American Jewish History holdings also include records of the Educational Alliance, the Hebrew Aid Society and records of several hundred landsmanschaften (worker’s associations).

The American Sephardi Federation was established in 1925 in Vienna to unify the many Sephardic communities worldwide. Here you could research Sephardic Americans such as the great legal mind Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Although this collection is small compared to the collections of the other institutions, you shouldn’t ignore it, especially if you are interested in researching American Jewry. An online search yielded several books on American Jewry, including one specifically on Persian American Jewry which could make a very interesting research topic.

And then there’s the Leo Baeck Institute. Although most of its original documents are in German, its published material is mainly in English. In fact the renowned LBI yearbook is entirely in English. The LBI was founded in 1955 as a reaction to the Holocaust, to preserve the history of German-speaking Jews. The collection dates from the 16th century to the present and has over 70,000 volumes of books and more than 750 periodicals. It contains information on many interesting people, including Henry Kissinger, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Hans A. Krebbs (the Krebbs cycle, for all you biologists out there), and Moses Mendelssohn. You can research such topics as German-speaking American Jews who fought in the Civil War, immigration prior to World War II, Holocaust refugees, and the different forms of anti-Semitism as experienced by the Jewish community over the past 200 years.

Before we discuss the Yeshiva University Museum, let’s talk about how you get access to the above four libraries. Since the reading room [http://www.cjh.org/archives] is only open Monday-Thursday, 9-5, you might want to plan ahead and go on a day when you don’t have school. You should have an idea of what kind of information you are looking for, and you should call the Center for Jewish history in advance of your visit. This way, librarians at the CJH can tell you if it is worth a trip out to see them (and their books). And if they do have the information you want, they can have it pulled for you so you don’t have to waste time looking for it during your visit. You can also look up many of the holdings in the library online –although some information is only available from the onsite catalogues.

When you arrive for your appointment, you will be ushered up to the catalogue room, where you guessed it, you have access to catalogues, in both card and book format, as well as online search engines. Once you have found items you would like to view, you will need to fill out a card. Armed with this card and only pencil, paper, and a laptop, if you have it (you’ll need to put any other stuff with you in a locker provided you), you will enter the Reading Room, where professional librarians, archivists, and historians will retrieve the items you request and help you with questions. Though you have to look at the documents in the reading room, you can stay as long as you need at one of the workstations, each of which has a jack for the internet for you laptop owners out there. The Reading Room is also now equipped with Wireless Internet access for all you wireless users out there. Realize that you may want to schedule a full day if not several hours for your visit since the library is non-lending—so you can only look at things while you’re there. If you need more background on a document, there are several reference texts in the reading room. Though the reading room is a first-class institution and attracts scholars from around the world, it also reaches out to families and students, so while you should be grateful and respectful, don’t be intimidated. Go use this resource. It is one of the best available to do research in the city.

Okay, but remember part of this amazing Center isn’t a library. In your haste to use the libraries, don’t forget about the fifth member of this consortium, the Yeshiva University Museum. You probably want to go online first and see what the museum has on exhibit. A generalist, the museum has exhibited everything from contemporary interpretations of the Book of Samuel to daily biblical life to exhibits that explore Jewish life and identity in cultures around the world. So basically there’s no guarantee that the museum will have any exhibits that have to do with American history, never mind the specifics of what you’re studying. But it is worth a check, since past exhibits include “Moritz Daniel Oppenheim: Jewish Identity in 19th Century Art,” “Komar and Melamid: Symbols of the Big Bang,” and more recently “A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life.” The Museum also recently hosted “Art Against Forgetting” in commemoration of 9/11. In addition to the museum’s galleries, you should check out the smaller galleries on each floor, where the other four CJH organizations have smaller exhibits of their holdings. When you plan your visit, be aware that the museum isn’t always open when the reading room is.

The CHJ’s events and programs [http://calendar.cjh.org/calendar/index.cfm?userid=1] are too many and too varied to do any justice to in a simple paragraph. Each of the institutions runs its own programs, discussions, lecture series, workshops, screenings, recitals, gallery talks –you name it. Check the CJH website as well as those of the institutions that comprise it. Of special note is the Samburg Program [http://www.cjh.org/family/samberg.cfm]: over two weeks, students learn about American Jewish history and immigration by studying their own family history. Although it helps to be Jewish, participants do not actually need to have Jewish ancestry, but they should be high school kids. This is just one example of a cool program run by the Genealogy Institute. Just think how many cool programs there are, given the number of organizations and interests pursued at the Center for Jewish History! You should definitely go to the website and check out the programming. You never know what interesting, fun, and helpful activities you will find out about.

Also, you should know that the Center for Jewish History recently developed a sizable electronic library. It includes at least one hundred relevant sites, many of which are in English. The Center also posts links on its website to the websites of several other Jewish organizations that you might find helpful in your research.

Going to the Center for Jewish History is really going to five institutions under just one roof. As a student with limited time and resources, you’ll find this a great way to economize your research and access material and programs under the stewardship of five world-class institutions all at the same time. What are you waiting for?