Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives

The Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives was founded in 1988 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the documentary history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania.

The program is supported by Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives Endowment Fund of the Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Senator John Heinz History Center, and many generous donors.

The collections of the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives document the lives of individuals and families and the histories of congregations, organizations, institutions, and businesses. Correspondence, diaries, memoirs, ledgers, minutes, scrapbooks, ephemera, audio tapes, photographs, and moving images are housed in archival containers and stored in a monitored, secure, and climate-controlled environment. Related artifacts are transferred to the History Center’s museum collections.

The collections are available for research in the reading room of the Detre Library & Archives of the History Center.

For more information, please email rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org.

Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives Newsletter

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  • Seth Glick, Chair
  • Matt Cohen, Vice Chair
  • Ateret Cope, Secretary
  • Becca Ackner
  • Patti Anouchi
  • Maureen Kelly Busis
  • Estelle Comay
  • Hilary Daninhirsch
  • Meyer Grinberg
  • Susie Gross
  • Jedd Hakimi
  • Teddi Horvitz
  • Jill Joshowitz
  • Carole Kamin
  • David Knoll
  • Anita Kornblit
  • Donna Kruman
  • Orly Olbum
  • Ben Samson
  • Matt Sandler
  • John Spear
  • Lindsay Strassman
  • Adele Sufrin
  • Loren Vivio
  • Marcia Weiss
  • Evan Wolfson
  • Bobbi Zimmer-Kann
  • Alan & Barbara Ackerman (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • H. Arnold Gefsky (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Stanley Levine (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • J. Robert Myers (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Bernard Newman (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Dr. Alexander Orbach (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Adam Reinherz (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Judith R. Robinson (permanent ex-officio, past chair)
  • Alan & Barbara Ackerman (Berkman Endowment Fund representative)
  • Dan Brandeis (Jewish Community Foundation director)
  • Melissa Hiller (ex-officio, American Jewish Museum director)
  • Catherine Loevner (ex-officio, Heinz History Center board liaison)
  • Richard E. Rauh (ex-officio, Rauh family representative)
  • Toby Tabachnick (ex-officio, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle editor)
  • Eric Lidji (Rauh Jewish Archives director)
  • Matt Strauss (Detre Library & Archives director)

History of the Rauh Jewish Archives

From 1989 until 1999, the Archives was supported by the United Jewish Federation (currently the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh), in-kind contributions of the Senator John Heinz History Center, and donors. In 1999, Richard E. Rauh created an endowment at the United Jewish Federation Foundation, and the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Archives was renamed the Rauh Jewish Archives (RJA). In 2004, through an agreement between the Jewish Federation Foundation, the RJA Advisory Committee, and the History Center, the RJA has become a program of the History Center, with the income from the RJA Endowment at the Jewish Federation Foundation has been directed to the History Center to support the work of the RJA.

A Tradition of Giving: The History of Jewish Philanthropy in Pittsburgh

Generation to Generation: Family Stories drawn from the Rauh Jewish Archives