Australians Visit the Synagogue

Today I had the privilege of showing the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum to a group from Australia! Thirty students from Notre Dame University in Freemantle, Australia, are here in Washington for three weeks, studying American politics and D.C. history at the Catholic University of America. Their professor, Leslie Woodcock Tentler from Catholic University, brought them to Washington's oldest synagogue after they toured other parts of the neighborhood.

I showed them the building's unique history--and how it fits into the history of this neighborhood, the Jewish community, and the city writ large. The picture shows students examining what the synagogue looked like just after its move in 1969.

We love to have classes--from kindergarten to college, from our city or from another hemisphere--come by our building and learn about Washington's Jewish history. At the university level, it's perfect for a D.C. history, urban history, or American Jewish history class.

Want to bring your group by? Click here for more information, or feel free to contact me!

Object of the Month: June 2011

Object #: 2011.7
Donor: Leo M. Bernstein Family Foundation
Description: Leo M. Bernstein Archival Collection, which includes biographical materials, correspondence, family history, professional & community recognition, photographs, scrapbooks, and other memorabilia about the life and work of Leo M. Bernstein, D.C. banker, real estate broker, Zionist, civil rights promoter, philanthropist, American history enthusiast and collector.

Professional Life

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1915, Leo Bernstein graduated from the city’s Central High School. He received an informal education in real estate while working with his father’s real estate investments. The 1906 deed for his grandfather’s kosher butcher shop and home at 816 Sixth Street, NW, is in the collection. He founded his own real estate company at age 18. Within a year, Bernstein challenged racial and religious covenants, which barred the sale of properties to persons of color or to Jews, selling a house in a “whites only” neighborhood near Howard University to an African-American professor.

While working in real estate, Bernstein went to night law school, graduating in 1936 from the Columbus Law School (now Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law). Over the next few decades, Bernstein owned and ran several D.C. banks. Seen here, Bernstein (right) and D.C. Commissioner Gilbert Hahn, Jr., raise the District of Columbia flag at the D.C. National Bank headquarters at 18th & K Streets, NW, in 1971.

History Enthusiast

Bernstein enjoyed collecting historic documents, especially those relating to American presidents; furniture; and other objects, exhibiting some of them in the lobbies of his banks. This interest led him to become involved in historic preservation in the Shenandoah Valley communities of Middletown and Strasburg, Virginia starting in 1960. There, Bernstein helped save and restore several buildings, including the 18th-century Wayside Inn. As documented by itineraries, correspondence, and photographs, Bernstein organized and hosted family reunions and getaway weekends for friends and colleagues there and at other hotels he owned in the region. Among the groups Bernstein welcomed was the Washington Board of Rabbis, which met at the Wayside Inn many times during the 1970s and 1980s.

Jewish Community Involvement

Bernstein’s involvement in Jewish causes and organizations was local, national, and international. These included Adas Israel Congregation, United Jewish Appeal, Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington, American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Anti-Defamation League, and Yeshiva University. Bernstein served on the board of the Jewish Historical Society for nine years in the 1970s and ‘80s. This 1983 certificate of appreciation from the D.C. Section of the National Council of Jewish Women was awarded for his support on the occasion of NCJW’s 90th birthday in 1983.

As a young man, Bernstein was active locally in the cause of Zionism. In a 1999 oral history, Bernstein told of secret meetings attended by community leaders like Abraham Kay, Joe Cherner, and Morris Pollin: “Before Israel was a state, we had many Haganah meetings. We were getting ready to help Jews get into Palestine. They needed money for guns, ammunition and ships. We met at my office at 718 Fifth Street.” One highlight of the collection is a 1948 letter from Joseph Cherner, president of the Louis D. Brandeis District of the Zionist Organization of America, appointing Bernstein chair of the Embassy Building Committee, charged with finding a suitable building for the first Israeli Embassy.

Donation of Collection

Bernstein passed away 2008 at the age of 93. The following year, the Jewish Historical Society started a major archival project funded by the Leo M. Bernstein Family Foundation to organize and preserve this extensive collection of Bernstein’s business and personal papers. The Society completed the project in 2010 and was honored to accept the Leo M. Bernstein Archival Collection when the Foundation formally donated it last month.

Do you have material documenting local Jewish individual that you’d like to donate to the Jewish Historical Society’s collection? Please contact us at info@jhsgw.org or (202) 789-0900.

Preserving Community Heritage

Today our intern, Samantha, and I visited the U Street offices of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. We were there to pick up a check for a D.C. Community Heritage Project grant! Here I am with HCWDC's Executive Director, Joy Ford Austin.

Thanks to HCWDC and the MARPAT Foundation for giving us grants to create four exhibition panels in our historic synagogue and a panel outside. When you come to the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum later this year, you'll see panels with images and text about the birth of Adas Israel, the building's architecture, the 1876 dedication service, President Grant's visit to the dedication, and neighborhood life in the early-to-mid 1900s. We're also creating a short video about the synagogue's history.

This project is the first phase of implementing an exhibition plan we created in 2009, with funding from HCWDC and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The entire exhibition--to be completed after the synagogue is moved--will tell the story of the synagogue building, its early congregants, and by extension the Judiciary Square neighborhood.

We're honored to be among the neighborhood and local history associations awarded grants from HCWDC this year. Be on the lookout for HCWDC's annual symposium on the Community Heritage Project, tentatively scheduled for December 8.

Honoring Jewish Chaplains

For years Chaplains Hill at Arlington National Cemetery has held monuments to Protestant and Catholic military chaplains killed in the line of duty--but none for their Jewish counterparts. Last week, we were honored to be a part of rectifying that.

On Thursday, Ken Kraetzer (left), Admiral Harold Robinson (center), and Shelley Rood of the Jewish Federations of North America (right)--who have been spearheading the effort--stopped by our office on their way to a meeting with the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which approves all monuments in the nation's capital and Arlington National Cemetery. They impressed us with their practice presentation, and apparently impressed the CFA with the real thing, as well--the design for the monument was approved, with only minor tweaks!

All of the funds needed for the creation of the Jewish Chaplains Monument at Arlington have been raised. Since last fall, we've been creating an accompanying brochure about Jews buried at Arlington (in cooperation with the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington). We've raised $2,000 of the $10,000 needed for that project; click here to donate (indicate that your donation is for Arlington Cemetery).

We'll look forward to the monument's dedication--now a step closer to happening.

A Successful Jewish American Heritage Month!

Chairman Brown addresses the crowd
Photograph by Betty Adler

Our Jewish American Heritage Month programs culminated at City Hall last month, where we celebrated with D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, the D.C. Council, and even the mayor.  This special event, co-organized with the Jewish Community Relations Council, included a kosher deli lunch and our exhibition, Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln’s City, which was on view in the Wilson Building atrium.


During May we served 625 people through our programs.  Countless others viewed our exhibitions.

Debbie Linick of JCRC,
D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan,
JHSGW Executive Director Laura Apelbaum,
and D.C. Mayor Vincent Grey
Photograph by Betty Adler

• We ran 7 adult programs including a walking tour of Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery
• We served 4 youth groups—from as far away as New Jersey and Chicago—through synagogue tours, youth programs, and our living history show
• We partnered with 7 organizations: Jewish Community Relations Council, Foundation for Jewish Studies,

  

  Joan Nathan and Spike Mendelsohn
  speaking at the National Archives

  National Archives, Ford’s Theatre, Historical Society of Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, and Jewish Theological Seminary
• We responded to 6 research requests ranging from a German graduate student, to George Washington University professor to Ohev Sholom rabbi.
• We displayed 3 exhibitions: Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln’s City, Through the Lens: Jeremy Goldberg’s Washington, and Ties That Bind: Washington-Area Jews and the Birth of Israel.
• We hosted a graduation event for Context.
• We hosted members of the Shomrim Society, a Jewish police fraternity, during National Police Week (seen below)



Photograph by Pat Fisher

• We contributed to Jewish American Heritage Month’s 50 States/50 Stories project by submitting the story of Washingtonian Chaplain Alexander Goode, one of the Four Chaplains who gave their lives during WWII.  Our submission led to President Obama referring to Rabbi Goode in his JAHM proclamation.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Challah Month

This morning, our director Laura's husband, Perry, delivered 40 loaves of challah! Since May 2009, we've sold challah in the neighborhood as part of the celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. This picture shows the challah before we sent it out.

Interested in buying some? Click here to order--you can still get challah for the next 3 weeks for $15. If you order 5 per week in an office or building, we can deliver in the Penn Quarter area.

And don't forget about the other ways you can join us in celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month!

Object of the Month: May 2011

Object #: 1999.13.1
Donor: Pearl Franck
Description: Celebration for the 25th Anniversary of the State of Israel, May 1973. L to R: Bernie Rosenberg (celebration chair for Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington), D.C. Mayor Walter Washington, and Isaac Franck (executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington)

Background: Isaac Franck became executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington in 1949. Franck, working with such influential Council presidents as Rabbi Isadore Breslau, Aaron Goldman, Albert E. Arent, Louis Grossberg, and Seymour D. Wolf, led the Community Council as it addressed a wide range of social and political problems.

While the Council was formed to serve the local Jewish community, it did not shy away from issues that affected the greater good. Among these were issues of civil rights and desegregation, education, assistance to the poor, separation of church and state, equal opportunity, and Home Rule for the District of Columbia. For example, in 1953, the Council lent its name to the Thompson’s Restaurant court case, decided by the Supreme Court. The case ended segregation in public accommodations in Washington, D.C. Following desegregation of public schools the subsequent year, the Council worked with city and religious leaders to encourage a peaceful transition. In 1963, Franck arranged for Martin Luther King, Jr., to address a citywide meeting at Adas Israel. That August, King returned to Washington to give his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Council coordinated local Jewish involvement in the historic event. In this photo of the march, Franck is seen in the lower right.

When Isaac Franck retired in 1973, Jewish Community Council membership had more than tripled. The Washington Post wrote that he “gave [the Jewish community] not only a degree of cohesion, he also sought for it a special place because of its location in the national’s capital.” During Franck's tenure, the Council grew dramatically and worked with other organizations and faiths. He enabled 173 local organizations to speak as one while taking action on a wide range of community matters.

Today, the Council continues its important work with a new organizational name, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

Do you have material documenting local social justice movements that you’d like to donate to the Jewish Historical Society’s collection? Please contact us at info@jhsgw.org or (202) 789-0900.