CURRENT EXHIBITS

We currently have several collections and exhibits available through Special Collections in Anderson Academic Commons. For example,

• Pioneer Jewish Women of Colorado
• The Lowenstein Family: A Story of Survival (online)
• Chasing the Cure: Tuberculosis and the Jewish Community (online)
• and many more

Check out the Beck Archives webpage for more information on available collections or to make an appointment.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The 18th Annual John C. Livingston Lecture in American Jewish History

"Wall at the Border: How Contemporary Nativism Echoes Anti-Semitic Immigration Restrictions of an Earlier Era"

Lunch & lecture with Dr. Alan Kraut
American University in Washington D.C.

January 8, 2017, 11:30-1:30 p.m.
Reservations are $18 per person

East Side Kosher Deli
499 S. Elm Street
Denver, CO 80246 

For more information or to make your reservation today, contact Dr. Jeanne Abrams at (303) 871-2977, Jeanne.Abrams@du.edu, or click here to print and mail in your reservation form.

 About the lecture: Newspaper headlines and contemporary political rhetoric echo a prevailing suspicion held by many Americans that today's immigrants and refugees from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are inferior to newcomers of an earlier era and pose a danger to the health and well-being of native-born Americans. Today's calls for restriction echo those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially criticisms once aimed at Eastern European Jewish newcomers as unfit for life in the United States. With Congressional debates over immigration possible in 2017, we might well compare earlier anti-Semitic demands for immigration restriction with contemporary demands for higher legislative and even physical walls to keep foreigners out.

About Dr. Kraut: Alan M. Kraut is University Professor and Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. and an affiliate faculty member in the American University School of International Service. He received his B.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York (1968) and his M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) from Cornell University. He holds a faculty appointment at the Uniformed University of the Health Sciences, the armed services medical school, and he is a Nonresident Fellow of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kraut is Past President of the Organization of American Historians, the largest professional organization of those who study U. S. history and current President of the National History Coalition. He is an elected fellow of the Society of American Historians.

Dr. Kraut is a specialist in U.S. immigration and ethnic history and the history of medicine and public health in the United States. He is the author or editor of nine books and over a hundred articles and book reviews. His books on immigration include, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921 (1982; rev. 2001), American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (co-authored, 1987), and Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace" (1994). The latter volume received the Theodore Saloutos Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. His 2003 volume, Goldberger's War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader was honored with the Henry Adams Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government, the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize from the American Public Health Association, and the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society. In 2007, Kraut and his wife, Deborah, co-authored Covenant of Care: Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in America. It received the Author's Award of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance. His most recent volume, Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping America's Immigration Story (co-edited with conference participant Professor David Gerber) was published in November 2013.

Kraut's scholarly projects have been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philosophical Society, the National Institutes of Health, and the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. In the autumn of 1996 he was the DeWitt Stetten, Jr. Senior Fellow at NIH with support from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Dr. Kraut chairs the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island History Advisory Committee of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. He has also served as a consultant to the National Park Service, and as an adviser to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. He has been an historical consultant on documentaries treating issues in immigration history and the history of medicine and public health for PBS and the History Channel. 

Recent EVENTS

On Nov. 13th, 2016, The Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society & Beck Archives hosted the RMJHS Annual Meeting.

This year's event featured a special screening of the PBS Special "Jewish Pioneers" featuring the life and work of Otto Mears, "Pathfinder of the San Juans." The screening was followed by the exhibit of RMJHS' newly acquired Otto Mears silver filigree railroad pass.

To view the flyer, please click here.

• RMJHS Annual Heritage Award Dinner - Screening of "Striking Liquid Gold: Colorado Jews in the Oil Industry" (May 16, 2016)

• 17th Annual Livingston Lecture, "The Hits, the Life, & the Lost Lyrics of Comedian & Song Parodist Allan Sherman" (Jan. 10, 2016)

• Jews & Booze: Becoming Americans in the Age of Prohibition (RMJHS Annual Mtg.; Oct. 18)

 For a complete list of past RMJHS events, please check the CJS past events page by clicking here.