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MUSUEM OF PENNSYLVANIA JEWISH HISTORY

Authors

Eliyana Adler

Ever since a course in architectural history I took as an undergraduate, I have been fascinated by the idea of buildings as historical sources. Although my own research is generally focused on Eastern Europe, right here in Pennsylvania we are surrounded by Jewish sites that are largely unexplored and undocumented. I look forward to learning more about them, together with my students and others who visit this museum.

Logan Paiste

Hello! My name is Logan Paiste. As of March 2016, I am a fourth year Penn State undergraduate student studying CAMS (Ancient Languages), Jewish Studies, and Chinese. I enrolled in the Virtual Museum Embedded Course because I am interested in learning more about my Jewish heritage and the history of Jewish life in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1988, my mother discovered that her great-great-grandmother, Mary Eisenhart, was Jewish and resided in Allentown. Through this week-long experience, I have two goals. First, I would like to learn about the different cemeteries in the Allentown area – including dates of use, lists of people who are buried there, and present condition of the site. Then, I would like to see if I can find the burial sites of some of Mary’s relatives. Since Mary married a Protestant, it is not likely that she was buried in a Jewish cemetery. Thank you for reading my introduction and I hope you will find delight in my discoveries!

Casey Sennett

I graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in the spring of 2023 with my Master of Art’s degree in Anthropology and Bachelor of Art’s degrees in Anthropology, History, Jewish Studies, and Middle East Studies. I grew up in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, a small-town located thirty minutes west of State College. Growing up, I knew my hometown had a Jewish cemetery, but I knew nothing about my hometown’s Jewish history. As I developed an interest in Jewish history in college, however, I began wondering about the Jewish history of my hometown and the greater Central Pennsylvania region.

While at Penn State, I completed a two semester internship with the Centre County Planning and Community Development Office (CCPCDO) researching the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte and the individuals buried there. (Click here to view my Rodef Shalom Cemetery research.) Under the supervision of Dr. Eliyana Adler, I completed my combined undergraduate and graduate thesis, “Overlooked Histories: An Ethnographic and Historical Study of the Jewish Communities of Central Pennsylvania” (click here to view my thesis), about the Jewish histories of Aaronsburg, Bellefonte, Lock Haven, Philipsburg, and State College, Pennsylvania. Through the Museum of Pennsylvania Jewish History and my own project (the Jewish Central Pennsylvania History Project, click here to view), I hope to bring more awareness to the Jewish history of Central Pennsylvania.

Joel Sobel

After working as a geographer at the Census Bureau for 32 years, I retired with my wife to State College in 2005. Since then, I have sat in on numerous courses at Penn State (no tuition, no homework, no tests, no stress). This spring (2016), I chose to attend Dr. Adler’s course on American Jewish History. At the same time that she was describing the Pennsylvania Museum of Jewish History website to the class, Penn State Hillel announced that it had purchased land in downtown State College and intended to move once a new building was constructed there. This brought me back to my days as a Penn State undergraduate in the 1960’s. I remembered that Hillel WAS downtown then. So what happened? Further, I realized that I didn’t remember much about the place. Where exactly was it? (I knew it was on Locust Lane, near Delta Upsilon, but that was about it.) What did it look like? (No recollection whatsoever.) I am retired, I had the time, and so I decided to do some “detectiving.”