The Myer & Rosaline Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

75th Anniversary of the Hebrew Sunday School Society. The Hebrew Sunday School Society was founded by Rebecca Gratz in 1818 to provide basic Jewish education to children with no background in Jewish subjects. Courtesy of Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center in Urban Archives of Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.

2013

Zalman Newfield, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, New York University

Between the Sacred and the Secular: Communal Continuity and Change in Contemporary Lubavitch Society

Zev Eleff, Brandeis University

Declarations of Independence: The Formation of Religious discourse and movements within American Judaism

Joshua Furman, University of Maryland

"Jew and American in the Making": Approaches to Education and Childrearing in the American Jewish Community, 1945-1967

Britt P. Tevis, University of Wisconsin - Madison

May It Displease the Court: Jewish Lawyers and the Democratization of American Law

2012

Amy Weiss, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, New York University

Between Cooperation and Competition: American Jewish and Protestant Zionists, 1939-1977

Joseph Gindi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Claiming Tradition: Contesting the Shift toward Ashkenazi Orthodoxy among Syrian Jews

Rachel Rothstein, University of Florida at Gainsville

"A Relationship of Equals": Polish and American Jews and the Creation of a New Polish Jewishness since 1968

Katie Rosenblatt, University of Michigan

"To Protect the Aims of Collective Bargaining with Collective Buying": Cooperative Housing, Ecumenical Activism, and the Labor Movement in the Early Cold War.

2011

Ronit Yael Stahl, The Kevy Kaiserman Memorial Fellowship, University of Michigan

God, War, and Politics: The American Military Chaplaincy and the Making of Modern American Religion

Garrett Eisler, Graduate Center, CUNY

"This Theater is a Battlefield": Political Performance and Jewish-American Identity, 1933-1948

Rachel Feinmark, University of Chicago

Look for the Union Label: The American Federation of Labor and the Jewish Labor Committee's Partnership for Economic Justice and International Human Rights, 1933-1955

Pearl Gluck, City College of New York

Where is Joel Baum: The Gender Dynamics and Community Politics of Post Holocaust Williamsburg

2010
Leandra Zarnow, University of California, Santa Barbara
Bella Abzug and the Promise of Progressive Change in Cold War United States

Caroline Luce (Honorable Mention), University of California, Los Angeles
Baking and the Jewish Labor Movement in Los Angeles 1920-1950

Amaryah Orenstein (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University
“Let My People Go” The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the Rise of American Jewish Identity Politics

2009
Adam Mendelsohn, College of Charleston
Center City: Philadelphia and the English-speaking Jewish World in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Maya Balakirsky Katz (Honorable Mention), Touro College
The Art of Hasidism: Chabad Dynasty and Visual Culture

Rebecca Kobrin (Honorable Mention), Columbia University
Creative Destruction: East European Jewish Immigrant Bankers, Financial Failure and the Reshaping of American Capitalism

David S. Koffman (Honorable Mention), New York University
The Jews’ Indian: Native Americans in the Jewish Imagination and Experience, 1824-1945

2008
Rachel Kranson, New York University
Grappling with the Good Life: Anxieties of Jewish Affluence in Postwar America

Joshua Nathaniel Aaron Lambert (Honorable Mention), University of Michigan
Unclean Lips: Obscenity and the Jews in North American Literature

David S. Koffman (Honorable Mention), New York University
The Jews’ Indian: Native Americans in the Jewish Experience and Imagination, 1824-1945

Erik M. Greenberg (Honorable Mention), University of California, Los Angeles
“Not for This Did the Prophets Sing and the Martyrs Die:” American Jewish Resistance to the Melting Pot, Circa 1900-1920

2007
Marni Davis, Emory University
On the Side of Liquor: American Jews and the Politics of Alcohol, 1870-1936

2006
Lauren Strauss, Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Painting the Town Red: Jewish Visual Artists, Yiddish Culture, and Progressive Politics in New York, 1917-1939

2005
Valerie Thaler, Yale University
The Reshaping of American Jewish Identity, 1945 to 1960

Leah Levitz Fishbane (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University
An ‘American Hebrew’ Renaissance: Young American Jews and the Challenge of Leadership in Late-19th Century American Judaism

2004
Mia Sara Bruch, Stanford University
The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man: American Jews and American Religious Pluralism, 1941-1960

Joshua A. Perelman (Honorable Mention), New York University
Choreographing Identity: Modern Dance and American Jewish Life, 1924-1964

Ari Y. Kelman (Honorable Mention), University of Pennsylvania
Station Identification: A Cultural History of New York’s Yiddish Radi

2003
Rona Sheramy, Brandeis University
Defining Lessons: Creating Jewish Memory of the Holocaust across the Generations

Lila Corwin Berman (Honorable Mention), Yale University
Presenting Jews: Jewishness and America, 1920-1960

2002
Shana Bernstein, Stanford University
Building Bridges at Home in a Time of Global Conflict: Interracial Cooperation and the Fight for the Civil Rights in Los Angeles, 1933-1954

Lisa Silberman Brenner (Honorable Mention), Columbia University
The Jazz Singer’s Legacy: The Racial Role-Play of African-American and Jews in Twentieth Century American Performance

Susan Gittleman (Honorable Mention), Temple University
The German Jewish Experience in America, for a biography of Edna Ferber

2001
Beth Cohen, Clark University
Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in America, 1946-1954

Susan Breitzer (Honorable Mention), University of Iowa
Class, Ethnicity, and Community: The Jewish Working Class of Chicago, 1886-1928

Shana Bernstein (Honorable Mention), Stanford University
Building Bridges at Home in a Time of Global Conflict: Interracial Cooperation and the Fight for Civil Rights in Los Angeles, 1933-1954

Alexander Molot (Honorable Mention), New York University
Between Reform Judaism and Jewish Nationalism: David Neumark and the Problematics of Modern Jewish Identity

Arlene Lazarowitz (Honorable Mention), University of California
Senator Jacob K. Javits and Soviet Jewish Emigration

2000
Marc Frey, Temple University
The American Soviet Jewry Movement, 1958-1972

Libby Garland (Honorable Mention), University of Michigan
Migrants, Aliens, Citizens: United States Immigration Policies and the Making of Jewish Americans, 1919-1939

Adam Howard (Honorable Mention), University of Florida
Return to Zion: Organized American Labor and the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1942-1948

1999
Lisa Levenstein, University of Wisconsin
Poor Jewish Women in Philadelphia, 1920-1960

Shuly Rubin Schwartz (Honorable Mention), Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Serving the Jewish People: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life

Joellyn Wallen Zollman (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University
Shopping for a Future: A History of the American Synagogue Gift Shop

Lawrence Charap (Honorable Mention), Johns Hopkins University
Jewish-Prostestant Interfaith Dialogue in the American Religious Press, 1883-1914

1998
Michael Alexander, Yale University
Jazz Age Jews

Kirsten Fermaglich (Honorable Mention), New York University
Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims: Secular Jews, the Holocaust, and American Intellectual Culture, 1959-1978

Andrea Most (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University
Cantors and Jazz Singers: Theatre as a Medium of Modernization and Acculturation

1997
Tova Perlmutter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
The Federal Voting Rights Act and Jews in New York City

Arthur Kiron (Honorable Mention), Columbia University
Sabato Marais: Italian Rabbinic Humanist in Victorian Philadelphia

Rakhmiel Peltz (Honorable Mention), Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania
Forging the Mainstream of American Jewish History: Children of Immigrants
Interpret Their Legacy

Mark Frey (Honorable Mention), Temple University
A Chorus of Protest from the Free World: The American Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1957-1963

1996
Marc Dollinger, Pasadena City College, California State University at Northridge
Turning Inward, The Transformation of American Liberal Politics from 1946-1980

1995
Aviva Ben-Ur, Brandeis University
Americanization in a Sephardic Immigrant Community: Two Advice Columns from the New York Ladino Press

Alice A. Butler-Smith
Eisenhower, the Middle East and the Jews: Imitations of Influence

1994
Andrew Harrison, Temple University
Mr. Philadelphia: Albert M. Greenfield (1887-1967)

Jeff Watson (Honorable Mention), Brandeis University
From Parallel Postures to Interface: The Interfaith Movement and Jewish Christian Relations 1917-1933

Eli Weinerman (Honorable Mention), Indiana University
Philadelphia Jewry and American-Soviet Dialogue over Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union

Etan Diamond (Honorable Mention), Carnegie Mellon University
The Suburbanization of North American’s Orthodox Jews: Toronto, Ontario, 1940-1990