Moses Rischin

'''Moses Rischin''' (1925-2020<ref name="H-Judaic">{{cite web |url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/6353695/passing-professor-moses-rischin |title=Passing of Professor Moses Rischin |publisher=H-Judaic |date=2020-08-21 |access-date=2020-08-22}}</ref>) was an American historian, author, lecturer, editor, and emeritus professor of history at San Francisco State University.<ref name="MJL">[http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/About_Jewish_History_Community/MemoryTO/LowerEastSide.htm My Jewish Learning: The Lower East Side] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080111040059/http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/About_Jewish_History_Community/MemoryTO/LowerEastSide.htm |date=2008-01-11 }}</ref><ref name="Lehrhaus">[http://www.lehrhaus.org/about/staff.html Lehrhaus Judaica – The Adult School For Jewish Studies] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514200126/http://www.lehrhaus.org/about/staff.html |date=2008-05-14 }}</ref> He coined the phrase new Mormon history in a 1969 article of the same name.<ref name="Sunstone">http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/issues/123/123-28-32.pdf{{dead link|date=February 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Rischin is considered an authority on American ethnic and immigration history<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/jointsessions/paperarchive/uppsala/ws20/manor.pdf |title=Utopia as a camouflage : The case of Abe Cahan and his legacy |access-date=2008-02-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607234605/http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/jointsessions/paperarchive/uppsala/ws20/manor.pdf |archive-date=2011-06-07 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="NYT06071993">{{cite news| url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE4DD123BF934A35755C0A965958260 | work=The New York Times | title=Abigail Rischin, David A. Moss | date=1993-06-07 | accessdate=2010-05-13}}</ref> and a pioneer in the field of American Jewish history.<ref>[http://magnes.org/collections/wjhc.html Western Jewish History Center || The Magnes] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060614001255/http://magnes.org/collections/wjhc.html |date=2006-06-14 }}</ref> Historian Selma Berrol, however, has challenged the minimal treatment Rischin has given to the tensions between earlier German Jews and later Russian Jews in America.<ref>[http://www.historymatters.appstate.edu/documents/leofrank.pdf Jason Schulman] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070628225306/http://www.historymatters.appstate.edu/documents/leofrank.pdf |date=2007-06-28 }}</ref>

==Biography== Rischin was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City.<ref name="H-Judaic"/> His undergraduate studies were at Brooklyn College.<ref>[http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/noindex/9496/faculty/fac-rs.htm Bulletin-Faculty R & S]</ref> Harvard University awarded him a Ph.D. in 1957.<ref name="SFSU">{{cite web |url=http://bss.sfsu.edu/history/Advising%20Materials/Program%20Booklets/Booklet-graduate.pdf |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2008-02-21 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070709213846/http://bss.sfsu.edu/history/Advising%20Materials/Program%20Booklets/Booklet-graduate.pdf |archivedate=2007-07-09 }}</ref>

Ruschin became a professor at San Francisco State University in 1964.<ref name="Gale">"Moses Rischin". ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors''. Gale. Farmington Hills, Mich.: 2001. Retrieved via ''Gale In Context: Biography'' database, 2020-08-22.</ref> In addition to his professorship, he sat on the board for the ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' and on the council of the American Jewish History Society.<ref name="Chadwyck">[http://iibp.chadwyck.com/infopage/publ/jae.htm Browse Journals]</ref><ref name="AJHS">[http://www.ajhs.org/academic/faculty_member.cfm?id=75 AJHS: Academic Council Member]</ref> During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Rischin was a signatory of "Historians in Defense of the Constitution" wherein 400 historians criticized efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton.<ref name="Salon">[http://www.salon.com/news/1998/10/30newslist.html Salon Newsreal | "Historians in Defense of the Constitution"]</ref><ref name="WP">{{cite news| url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/petition102898.htm | title=Historians' Statement on Impeachment |newspaper=The Washington Post | date=1998-10-30 | accessdate=2010-05-13}}</ref>

He was the longtime director of the Western Jewish History Center, at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, from its founding in 1967;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/5309/edition_id/98/format/html/displaystory.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060510160405/http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/5309/edition_id/98/format/html/displaystory.html |archive-date=2006-05-10 |last=Katz |first=Leslie |date=1997-01-17 |title=Jewish History Center Marks Three Decades of Capturing the Past |work=J. The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Western Jewish History Center |date=15 March 2010 |publisher=The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley |url=https://magnes.berkeley.edu/scholars/magnes-history/people-and-institutions/institutions/western-jewish-history-center |accessdate=2020-08-22}}</ref> from 2005 until approximately 2010, an annual lecture was given there in his name.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://emanuelsf.org/downloads/chronicle/chron_dec05.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070710004656/http://emanuelsf.org/downloads/chronicle/chron_dec05.pdf |archive-date=2007-07-10 |date=2005-12-01 |work=The Temple Chronicle |place=San Francisco, Calif. |title=Mazel Tov! |page=13}} "To Dr. Moses Rischin and Dr. Ruth Rischin on the establishment of The Moses Rischin Annual Lecture at the Western Jewish History Center."</ref>

A collection of historical essays was published in Rischin's honor in 1996.<ref>''An Inventory of Promises: Essays on American Jewish History: In Honor of Moses Rischin'' by Jeffrey S. Gurock and Marc Lee Raphael (Carlson Publishing, 1996)</ref>

A character in the 1967 novel ''Meyer Meyer'' by Helen Hudson may have been partly modeled after him.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/mem.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303232141/http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/mem.html |archive-date=2016-03-03 |last=Traister |first=Daniel |title='You Must Remember This'; or, Libraries as a Locus of Cultural Memories |publisher=Daniel Traister's Home Page, University of Pennsylvania}}</ref>

==Books== *''The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914'' (Harvard University Press) {{ISBN|978-0674715011}} *''Jews of the American West'', with John Livingston (Wayne State University Press) {{ISBN|0-8143-2171-2}} *''The American Gospel of Success, Individualism and Beyond'', Edited with an Introduction by Moses Rischin (A Quadrangle Paperback)

==Articles and essays== *"The New Mormon History", ''The American West'' 6, March 1969, 49. *"The Jewish Experience in America: A View from the West" *Foreword to ''California Jews'' (2003) Brandeis University Press

== Awards ==

* 1963: National Jewish Book Award in ''The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/past-winners?category=30762|title=Past Winners|last=|first=|date=|website=Jewish Book Council|language=en|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-01-23}}</ref>

==See also== *[https://www.questia.com/library/1G1-17884743/i-ll-take-manhattan-reflections-on-jewish-studies "I'll take Manhattan: reflections on Jewish studies" by Deborah Dash Moore]

==References== {{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rischin, Moses}} Category:1925 births Category:2020 deaths Category:American anthologists Category:American cultural historians Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the American West Category:Historians of the Latter Day Saint movement Category:Jewish American historians Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American magazine writers Category:San Francisco State University faculty Category:Writers from California Category:21st-century American historians Category:21st-century American male writers Category:Brooklyn College alumni Category:Academics from Brooklyn Category:Historians from New York (state) Category:21st-century American Jews