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Journals
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Connecticut
Jewish History: Volume 1, Number 1
Jews in Connecticut Politics
Editor:
Lothar Kahn (1923-1990)
Managing Editor: Marsha Lotstein
The first issue of Connecticut Jewish History
is devoted to the Jews in Connecticut politics on the national
and state level. Our political leaders were first generation
Americans. From moderate Republicans to liberal Republicans,
from moderate Democrats to liberal Democrats, these public
servants believed that their Jewishness was somehow linked
to their concerns for justice. Often their attitude manifested
itself in a deep respect for human life and a concern for
those suffering because of race, nationality, or physical
disability. In battling social evils, these political leaders,
who came to prominence at the very time their fellow Jews
in Europe were being destroyed in the Holocaust, showed little
sympathy for radical solutions. In keeping with the mainstream
of American politics, they fought for moderate change within
the system of the nation that had been so good to them. We
are grateful to the late Abraham Ribicoff, the most prominent
Jewish name in Connecticut politics, for an autobiographical
sketch in which he describes how his Jewishness became part
of his political experience. Also included is an essay documenting
the career and achievements of Connecticut's first Jewish
Congressman, the late Herman P. Kopplemann; and interviews
with the late Honorable Louis Shapiro, who served as the Republican
majority leader in the state legislature in the 1950's and
was later appointed to the State Supreme Court, and the late
Milton and Gertrude Koskoff of Plainville, who were one of
the few husband and wife teams to serve in the state legislature.
This issue also includes a fascinating, non-political portrait
of a 19th century Hartford physician, Nathan Mayer, who was
a major Hartford figure, noted not only as a surgeon in war
and peace but also as a drama critic and popular after-dinner
speaker. It is our hope that in this journal we were able
to recapture and recreate much of the variety and richness
of the Jewish experience in America.
Contributors:
David G. Dalin is former associate professor of American
Jewish history at the University of Hartford.
Lothar Kahn, (1923-1990), was professor emeritus at
Central Connecticut State University. Kahn was a noted author
of many articles and books, including Mirrors of the Jewish
Mind, Insight and Action: The Life and Work of Lion
Feuchtwanger and Between Two Worlds: A Cultural History
of German-Jewish Writers.
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Connecticut
Jewish History: Volume 2, Number 1
1843-1943
One Hundred Years of Jewish Congregations in Connecticut:
An Architectural Survey
Editor:
John Sutherland
Managing Editor: Marsha Lotstein
No institution has been more important in the history
and development of the Jewish community in Connecticut than
the synagogue. The petition by Hartford Jews to the legislature
in 1843 to amend the State Constitution to permit the public
worship of Jews, followed by the prompt enactment of an
enabling public act, set in motion the beginning of synagogue
building which contributed to the growth of the Jewish community
as well as to the architecture of the state. This edition
of Connecticut Jewish History is devoted to the history
and architectural significance of 46 historic synagogue
buildings throughout the state of Connecticut. This material
is based upon the architectural survey conducted by the
historian David F. Ransom and includes over 35 historic
and contemporary photographs. It includes an introductory
essay written by Jeffery H. Kaimowitz offering a brief history
of synagogues dating from Biblical times. The complete survey
with research notes and photographs of each building is
on file at the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford
and may be consulted by interested researchers. This important
edition of the Jewish Historical Society's journal serves
as a permanent record of many sites that have changed or
disappeared, or are in danger of doing so in the future.
Its extensive bibliography and resource listing will also
provide invaluable research information for students and
scholars. Connecticut is one of only a few states to have
inventoried the entire state's historic Jewish religious
sites.
Contributors:
Jeffery H. Kaimowitz received his Ph.D. in Classics
from the University of Cincinnati. He has taught at Miami
University of Ohio and has worked in the Special Collections
Department at the New York Public Library. Currently Dr.
Kaimowitz is curator of the Watkinson Library at Trinity
College, Hartford.
David F. Ransom, Architectural Historian, is the
author of several books and articles, including George
Keller, Architect, a "Biographical Dictionary of Hartford
Architects," and is co-author of Structures
and Styles: Guided Tours of Hartford Architecture.
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Connecticut
Jewish History: Volume 3, Number 1
Witness to War 1941-45:
The Soviet Jewish Experience
Guest
Editor: Bruce M. Stave
Writer and Interview Editor: Betty N. Hoffman
Managing Editor: Marsha Lotstein
This issue of Connecticut Jewish History is devoted
entirely to the testimonies of 40 men and women, immigrants
from the former Soviet Union to the Greater Hartford area.
They speak compellingly about their involvement in the four-year
battle to defeat Nazi Germany, about courage, patriotism,
compassion, and endurance in the face of catastrophe. These
survivors speak of their involvement as members of the armed
services; as military medical personnel; as partisans in
the Jewish resistance; as survivors of ghettos, camps and/or
hiding; as refugees and evacuees in remote parts of the
USSR. They also convey the powerful identification with
the Soviet Union felt by many Jews during this era and their
dilemma when fellow citizens treated them as outsiders.
This issue includes a brief overview of World War II in
the Soviet Union allowing the readers to set these true
stories into the historical context.
Contributors:
Bruce M. Stave is Board of Trustees Distinguished
Professor of History and Director of the Center for Oral
History at the University of Connecticut. Author and editor
of ten books, Professor Stave's latest book, co-authored
with Michele Palmer is Witness to Nuremberg, an oral
history of those who participated in the war crimes trials
at the end of World War II.
Betty N. Hoffman is author of Jewish Hearts: A
Study of Dynamic Ethnicity in the United States and Soviet
Union, she has conducted research in the Soviet Jewish
community of Greater Hartford since 1988. Currently Dr.
Hoffman is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology
at Central Connecticut State University.
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Making A
Life, Building A Community:
A History of the Jews of Hartford
Written
By: David G. Dalin and Jonathan Rosenbaum
Making a Life, Building a Community places Hartford
within the larger contexts of American social, urban, ethnic,
and Jewish history by comparing its unique experience to
those of New England and other American Jewish communities.
Drawing extensively on primary sources such as synagogue
minute books, newspapers, family memoirs, and an important
new collection of oral histories, the authors skillfully
document internal divisions and issues of communal cohesiveness.
This careful study will be illuminating for anyone interested
in American social or ethnic history and the immigrant experience.
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Jewish Hearts:
A Study of Dynamic Ethnicity in the United States and the
Soviet Union
By:
Dr. Betty N. Hoffman
This ethnographic study compares and contrasts the changing
ethnic identity of those Russian Jews who settled in Hartford,
Connecticut between 1881 and 1930 with that of the Soviet
Jews who remained in Russia after the Revolution, became
Soviet citizens, and emigrated after 1975. Although both
groups were labeled "Jews," their internal definitions
of what constituted being Jewish and their personal experiences
were radically different. Using both archival and contemporary
oral histories and interviews of immigrants currently living
in Greater Hartford, Betty N. Hoffman traces the stories
of real people whose lives and choices are affected by both
their ethnic identity and the larger movements around them
as they made new homes in the United States.
Contributors:
Betty N. Hoffman is Adjunct Assistant Professor of
Anthropology at Central Connecticut State University, Adjunct
Instructor of Anthropology and Social Science at Saint Joseph
College, and Project Director of Witness to War: 1941-1945:
The Soviet Jewish Experience at the Jewish Historical
Society of Greater Hartford.
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