Eric Lidji
Eric Lidji
The home plate from Forbes Field in the floor of Posvar Hall (Photo courtesy of Eric Lidji)
May 18, 2026, 9:20 am
My own memory lane
Revisiting a core memory with help from the historic record
By Eric Lidji
In its heyday in the 1930s, the Lechem Aniyum Society gathered weekly in the old Beth Jacob synagogue to prepare some 200 boxes of food for local delivery. (Image courtesy Rauh Jewish Archives)
April 20, 2026, 9:18 am
Meat out of the pot
Before the New Deal and the Great Society, the Lechem Aniyum Society met a simple need: delivering kosher food to those who could not afford it.
By Eric Lidji
Of the 58 volumes from the Goodwill Collection placed at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, only three are easily discoverable today. (Photo courtesy of Eric Lidji)
March 18, 2026, 9:22 am
The Goodwill Collection
In the last era of turmoil overseas and rising threats at home, one Jewish communal leader sent Jewish books to libraries across the region.
By Eric Lidji
The annual “Traffic Essay Contest” invited students throughout the Pittsburgh area to write about the importance of road safety. This Certificate of Merit was issued to David P. Rosenfield, who became a noted pharmacist in Pittsburgh. It was signed by committee Chairman Dr. A. L. Lewin. (Image courtesy Rauh Jewish Archives)
February 16, 2026, 1:19 pm
When cars brought chaos, chaos brought ideas
Under several Jewish leaders, the Better Traffic Committee spent the late 1920s and 1930s advancing novel ideas to educate the public about the dangers of the car.
By Eric Lidji
Ohave Zedeck was the main shul in Oakcliffe. It bought a house at Craft and Niagara in 1921 and expanded into the front yard in 1936. The building is gone today. (Photo courtesy of the Rauh Jewish Archives)
January 22, 2026, 1:35 pm
Shai Miller’s Old Country
Dispatches from a 20-minute drive through Oakcliffe with its historian emeritus.
By Eric Lidji
In its heyday in the mid-1960s, Papercraft built a massive factory at the new RIDC Park in O’Hara Township filled with specialized equipment for managing the entire production of wrapping paper. (Image courtesy of Rauh Jewish Archives)
December 21, 2025, 12:16 pm
Christmas, made possible by Jewish Pittsburgh
In the days of Jewish manufacturing, Santa always stopped in Pittsburgh.
By Eric Lidji
Before the property was sold to Pine Township, Shalom Farms had a lakeside “manor” and barn. (Image courtesy Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project)
November 23, 2025, 6:09 pm
Shalom Farms, almost a Jewish paradise
Ben Paul Brasley established the farm for the Salk brothers in the 1940s and later challenged the local Jewish community to develop its full potential.
By Eric Lidji
Edward Weinblum produced and hosted the weekly WYEP-FM radio program “Israel Sings” and even hand-created a promotional program for the show. (Image courtesy of the Rauh Jewish Archives)
October 27, 2025, 12:14 pm
The voice of the Jewish people
Each week, "Israel Sings” brought the wide array of Jewish music to the airwaves of Pittsburgh.
By Eric Lidji
The first Nusach Ari service in Pittsburgh occurred on Passover 1903, on the second floor of 11 Townsend St., seen here in the 1950s, shortly before being demolished for the redevelopment of the Lower Hill. (Photo courtesy of the City of Pittsburgh Archives)
September 18, 2025, 11:37 am
Chabad crosses the Alleghenies
A discovery sheds light on the early history of Chabad Chassidim in Pittsburgh.
By Eric Lidji
Rodef Shalom Congregation brought Josiah Cohen to Pittsburgh from England in the 1860s to teach secular studies in its new day school. (Photo by Corinne Azen Krause Photographs, Rauh Jewish Archives)
August 20, 2025, 9:48 am
Working together separately
For the first decades of Jewish communal life here, resolving tensions within congregational affairs came at the expense of educational progress.
By Eric Lidji
The gate of the Chofetz Chaim Cemetery in Wilkins Township from the 1930s was likely welded atop the original Moses ben Amrom fence from 1911. (Image by Gerald Sapir Photographs, courtesy of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center)
July 21, 2025, 9:53 am
One acre
A small cemetery amid a swirling century of Jewish migration
By Eric Lidji
The cover of the 1917 dedication program for the Augsburg synagogue features a pinecone inside a Star of David—the civic symbol of Augsburg at the center of the ancient symbol of Jewish peoplehood. (Courtesy of the Estate of Rabbi Walter Jacob)
June 23, 2025, 5:15 pm
Up in the air
What happens when a small story stands astride the great winds of history?
By Eric Lidji
A certificate from Congregation Beth Shalom for the bat mitzvah of Ruth Lieberman in 1925 — part of the first group bat mitzvah ceremony held by the congregation. Without a “bat mitzvah” certificate, the congregation was forced to repurpose the standard “bar mitzvah” certificate. (Image courtesy Rauh Jewish Archives)
May 27, 2025, 8:40 am
Proto-Reconstructionism in Pittsburgh
In the rudimentary days of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s revolution in the early 1920s, Pittsburgh appears to have flirted with some of his ideas.
By Eric Lidji
Rabbi Pinchas N. Gross (left) and Harry Katz (right) at a Dec. 25, 1954, meeting to select a new name for the former Eastmont Hebrew Congregation, now known as Parkway Jewish Center Shaar Ha-shamayim. (Image provided by Rauh Jewish Archives)
April 17, 2025, 12:05 pm
The name game
Western Pennsylvania has had a lot of synagogues over the years, and so many of the most popular names for synagogue have been reused here many times.
By Eric Lidji
A production still from the 2013 production of “The Dybbuk” by the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival, showing Leah watching the burial of Channon. (Photo courtesy of the Rauh Jewish Archives)
March 9, 2025, 12:26 pm
‘The Dybbuk’ returns
In the last of a three-part series, “The Dybbuk” is revived locally on stage through three community theatre productions in 1984, 1993, and 2013.
By Eric Lidji
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