Abba Hillel Silver was the rabbi of Temple-Tifereth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio, and an international leader of the Zionist movement. The collection consists of minutes, correspondence, memoranda, reports, bulletins, press releases, publications, mainly related to Silver's work with the American Zionist Emergency Council, 1943-1945 and the United Palestine Appeal, 1934-1945. Additionally, the collection contains correspondence with Emanuel Newmann, Cyrus Sulzberger, and Sumner Welles, from the early 1940s; Zionist correspondence and memoranda related to the Zionist Organization of America, 1917-1934; correspondence and memoranda related to unemployment insurance, 1921-1937; and general correspondence, 1916-1937. The documents contain some notes in Hebrew, presumably written by Dr. Noach Orian, an Israeli researcher. The collection includes material related to the response of American Jewish leadership to the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust and the rescue of European Jewry, Jewish settlement in Palestine, and anti-semitism in America. Also included is a letter from David Ben Gurion to Justice L. Brandeis on the history of relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine; a statement by Rabbi Silver concerning contention over division of funds raised for the United Palestine Appeal, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the National Refugee Service; an interview with Henry Morgenthau by Dr. Bernard Joseph regarding conditions in Palestine under the British High Commissioner; and, a report by Chaim Weizmann on a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
