Library & Archival Resources
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Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History houses several significant manuscript and family collections of Texan Jews. For example, The Texas Jewish Historical Society Records, 1824-2015 include extensive documentation related to the settlement and history of Jews in Texas. The Briscoe Center also holds various documents by and about Jewish individuals, organizations, societies, and synagogues in Texas, such as The Henry Cohen Papers, 1850-1950 that document the career of Henry Cohen, an influential rabbi known for religious and social activities in Galveston. Other materials include the Radin Community in Lithuania Collection, 1930-2005, which documents East European Jewish life. The material was collected and donated to the Briscoe Center by Dr. Frank Kasman of Midland, Texas. Dr. Kasman also endowed the Schusterman Center’s The Kasman Family Lectures on Eastern European Life and Culture.
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Benson Latin American Collection
The Benson Latin American Collection includes rare Argentine Yiddish theater and literary materials from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as works by several Jewish Latin American authors and playwrights, such as Carlos M. Grünberg, César Tiempo, and Jacobo Fijman. The Benson also holds recordings of Jewish music from Latin America, among them a collection of music by Moroccan Jews who immigrated to Brazil. Other rare items include yearbooks and commemorative books by Jewish organizations in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico.
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Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center holds extraordinary manuscripts and other collections of Jewish writers, photographers, performance artists, and intellectuals such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer, Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Arthur Miller, Leon Uris, Stella Adler, and Arnold Newman. Norman Mailer’s archive is the largest personal archive at the HRC. The HRC also has an expansive collection of Commentary Magazine, the leading postwar journal of Jewish affairs after WWII. The South African Judaica Collection includes 485 rare volumes belonging to Jewish refugees from Europe, and the Gottesman Collection of Hebraica & Judaica includes 1,300 rare first editions, prayer books, Bibles, Mishnas, and Talmuds dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Together with the Schusterman Center, the HRC offers fellowships to support short-term residencies for researchers working on Jewish topics.
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Perry-Castañeda Library
The Perry-Castañeda Library has a wide-ranging collection of Jewish historical, literary, religious, and other printed texts. The PCL holds a number of major Jewish Studies and Hebrew journals, Yiddish-language newspapers, and a large collection of Yizkor books printed after the Second World War. Jewish displaced persons periodicals from the archives of the YIVO Institute, Holocaust materials from the Wiener Library in London, and Yiddish books can also be found on microfilm.
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Fine Arts Library
The Fine Arts Library contains a sizeable collection of Israeli films, books on Jewish artists and musicians, Israeli art, Holocaust art, and books on Yiddish and Jewish theater in the United States and Europe. The Historical Music Recordings Collection includes a number of recordings by Jewish composers.
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Guide to the Collections
A Guide to the Collections highlights in detail the variety of Jewish Studies materials available at UT Austin.
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