DAVID PERLMUTTER COLLECTION, 1940-1987, bulk 1977-1987

Summary: Material donated by David Perlmutter, spanning the period 1940 to 1987, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1977 to 1987. Includes letters received in his capacity as Secretary of the Morning Freiheit Committee of Lakewood, New Jersey, clippings from the Morning Freiheit and miscellaneous documents such as newsletters, programs and a photograph. Also includes the yearbook of the Jewish section of the communist fraternal organization and mutual aid society, the International Workers Order (1940), showing the Farmingdale Lodge, as well as records of the dues paid by the Farmingdale members to their funeral and cemetery policies over the period July to December, 1948, and a map of the plots in the IWO cemetery in Deans, New Jersey (1980), reserved for members of the Lakewood Culture Club, which succeeded the Farmingdale Lodge.

The newspaper clippings comprise death notices, New Year's greetings, and notices about how much money had been raised for the Freiheit from the Lakewood area. The Morning Freiheit was a Yiddish newspaper founded in 1922, with strong ties to the communist party. As the Yiddish community diminished in the 1970s and 1980s, the Freiheit circulation began to decline, and Perlmutter, who was chairman of the Lakewood Culture Club, tried to raise money for the paper in his community through sale of advertisements. The collection also contains records of contributions to the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (originally the Socialist-Zionist National Workers Alliance of America), for which Perlmutter also raised money. The correspondence in the collection consists of notes accompanying donations and receipts, as well as letters Perlmutter received from the Freiheit and from other Yiddish organizations such as Jewish Cultural Clubs and Societies, the Farband, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, and the Chaim Zhitlowsky Foundation for Secular Jewish Education. Most of this material is in Yiddish.