Bidspirit auction | (AMERICAN-JUDAICA). Palestine Israel Aid Society.

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA). Palestine Israel Aid Society. MANUSCRIPT LEDGER recording Donations and contact information across New York. All prepared by recording secretary, MRS. MINNIE ETRA . Contains address book of donors (c. 22 pages), individual donor records (pp. 165) with donation dates and amounts per donor and a donation list (pp. 11) recording total donations. English with some Hebrew and Yiddish. With 1957 aerogramme from R. Elisha Landau of Batei Rand in Jerusalem, with names of residents seeking further assistance. Few tears, few pages loose. Original boards. Folio. New York, 1944-63.     Extensive records including donor addresses across New York, from the Upper West Side, to Crown Heights, to countless other neighborhoods, highlighting New York’s Jewish demographic shifts over the ensuing decades. For example, the presence of committed donors to Israel residing on Williamsburg’s Rodney and Hooper Streets is highly unlikely to be found today as it was in the 1950’s.     Minnie (Mindel) Etra (1894-1999) was widowed at the young age of 23, her husband Bernard, a scion of the well known philanthropic Etra family, died in a car accident at the age of 29, leaving her with their only child, Morty. She never remarried and dedicated much of her long life to charity work, not adverse to advocating on behalf of organizations beyond her own ideological boundaries, fundraising for Jewish groups as diverse as the Israel Aid Society, Amit, Bais Ya’akov, Yeshiva University and the Kollel Rabbi Meir Ba’al HaNess, among others. Minnie Etra’s nephew was the late Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, and her great-nephew is Professor of Journalism Ari Goldman. Rabbi Lamm’s eulogy of Minnie Etra can be found here: https://archives.yu.edu/gsdl/collect/lammserm/index/assoc/HASH017b.dir/doc.pdf