The Johnstown Jewish Community oversize photographs consist primarily of enlargements of photographs used in various displays in the Johnstown synagogues and of transparencies and other photographs used by Ewe Morawaska in preparation for her book Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940. There are also photographs of Johnstown businesses, musical events, and other communikty events and gatherings, as well as unidentified persons and events.

The Johnstown Jewish Community photographs include publicity photographs of speakers for the Beth Zion forum, the conrerstone laying of the Beth Zion Westmont Temple, rabbis, activities of Beth Shalom in 1986, a medical clinic in ramla, Israel funded by the Congregation and prints and negatives used for the book Insecure Prosperity.

The Johnstown Jewish Community oversize records consists of a certificate to Beth Zion Congregation for membership in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and a certificate in French, with english translation, awarding the French Crois de Guerre to Manny Schwartz for heroic service in World War I.

The oversize photographs feature several panoramic views of banquets held in Pittsburgh during th mid 20th century. There is also a photo dating from 1917 of the first Beaver Falls confirmation class.

The Johnstown Jewish Community records are housed in 15 archival boxes and 2 shelf volumes and are arranged in six series. Series have been designated for Rodef Shalom Synagogue, Beth Zion Congregation, Johnstown Jewish Community organizations, Scrapbooks and the research materials of Ewe Morawska. These records include correspondence, meeting minutes, reports, clippings, notebooks, programs and photocopies of articles, vital records and obituaries.

This captivating story of the Jewish community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to metropolitan areas. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small-town communities like the one described here by Ewa Morawska. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. Rather than secularizing and diversifying their communal life, as did Jewish immigrants to larger cities, they devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multipurpose religious congregation. Morawska begins with an extensive examination of Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America. After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe occurred, Morawska takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. The resulting work will appeal simultaneously to students of American history, of American social life, of immigration, and of Jewish experience, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these topics.

The migrant has been designated the central or defining figure of the 20th century. Yet, for much of this period, research and theory have centered on adult men as representative, ignoring women's part in international migration. Weaving together history, theory, and immigrant women's own words, Memories of Migration reveals women's multifaceted participation in the mass migrations from eastern and southern Europe to the United States at the turn of the century. By focusing on women's responses to Americanization organizations, coethnic community networks, and income-producing opportunities, this book provides rich insight into the sources of immigrant women's distinct fates in America.