Fein & Lapidus Fellowship
Application deadline, March 31, 2025.
Winners will be notified by April 30th, 2025.
Fein Lapidus Fellowship Application
Eligibility: Fellowships may be awarded to graduate students pursuing dissertation research, postdocs, contingent faculty, and tenure-track faculty who do not have access to other research funds. The selection committee particularly encourages graduate students and early career scholars to apply and the application is open to all researchers who have reason to use AJHS collections, whether their primary field of study is American Jewish history or not.
Funds may be used to:
● Subvent travel and living expenses for research at the AJHS archive, housed at the Center for Jewish History (when the reading room is open to the public);
● Provide compensation for significant remote research in digitized AJHS collections
● Pay for the digitization of undigitized archival materials from the AJHS collection.
Award Amounts and Terms: Fellowships up to $2500 will be granted. At the end of the fellowship period, recipients will be expected to submit a 500-word report. Additionally, grantees may be invited to participate in AJHS seminars or conferences to present their research, or to write for the AJHS website and/or blog to discuss their project.
Application: Send as an email to info@ajhs.org with the subject line “Fein Lapidus Fellowship 2025 Application” by Monday, March 31st, 2025. The email should include the following materials:
● A two- to three-page description of the project that includes specific references to relevant archival collections at AJHS that will be consulted, and whether you are applying for onsite research assistance or digitization services. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with the AJHS collections staff in advance of submitting an application. Please contact Melanie Meyers at mmeyers@ajhs.org with questions about specific materials.
● A CV.
● A budget of no more than one page that may include, among other line items, travel and housing expenses, daily per diem (capped at $100/day), digitization fees, and technology costs.
● Graduate student applicants are required to include name and contact information for the primary dissertation advisor, who may be contacted during the final review process.
Winners will be notified by April 30th, 2025.
Past Award Winners
2024 Awardees
Emily Beeber
Hana Cordero Rothstein
Semih Gokatalay
2023 Awardees
Rachel Kaufman
Zoltán Kékesi
Andrew Sperling
Alexandra Zborovsky
Morton H. Frankel Memorial Fellowship
Application deadline, March 31, 2025.
Winners will be notified by April 30th, 2025.
Frankel Fellowship Application
Eligibility: Fellowships may be awarded to graduate students pursuing dissertation research, postdocs, contingent faculty, and tenure-track faculty who do not have access to other research funds. The selection committee particularly encourages graduate students and early career scholars to apply and the application is open to all researchers who have reason to use AJHS collections, whether their primary field of study is American Jewish history or not. Please note that the Frankel Fellowship is awarded for on-site research only.
Funds may be used to subvent travel and living expenses for research at the AJHS archive, housed at the Center for Jewish History (when the reading room is open to the public.)
Award Amounts and Terms: Fellowships up to $2500 will be granted. At the end of the fellowship period, recipients will be expected to submit a 500-word report. Additionally, grantees may be invited to participate in AJHS seminars or conferences to present their research, or to write for the AJHS website and/or blog to discuss their project.
Application: Send as an email to info@ajhs.org with the subject line “Frankel Fellowship 2025 Application” by Monday, March 31st, 2025. The email should include the following materials:
● A two- to three-page description of the project that includes specific references to relevant archival collections at AJHS that will be consulted, and whether you are applying for onsite research assistance or digitization services. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with the AJHS collections staff in advance of submitting an application. Please contact Melanie Meyers at mmeyers@ajhs.org with questions about specific materials.
● A CV.
● A budget of no more than one page that may include, among other line items, travel and housing expenses, daily per diem (capped at $100/day), digitization fees, and technology costs.
● Graduate student applicants are required to include name and contact information for the primary dissertation advisor, who may be contacted during the final review process.
Winners will be notified by April 30th, 2025.
Frankel Family Materials at AJHS
The Frankel Fellowship was established by the Frankel family to honor Morton Frankel, and encourage scholarship in American Jewish history. The Frankel family has also donated a memoir and other select materials to the AJHS; these materials can be found here.
Biography of Morton Frankel
Morton Frankel (A/K/A Morton Howard Frankel) was born in Trenton, New Jersey on June 21, 1914. He was the oldest child of Abraham and Fannie Frankel. To his loving family he was always “Uncle Mort,” and he will be referred to as “Mort” here.
He left high school after only two years, but he was an autodidact and a true lifetime learner. He knew more history and geography than most people and was a devoted member of the Brooklyn Historical Society. Although he never drove a car, he was the one everyone called to get driving directions. As will be related further below, he loved to share his geographic knowledge with anyone who might profit from it.
He enlisted in the Army and served from 1941 through 1946. He was sent to Italy, and, according to family lore, he fell in love with an Italian woman. Sadly he ended the relationship because she was not Jewish. He also served in North Africa where he and other Jewish servicemen attended a Seder under a tent in the Moroccan desert as guests of the local Jewish community. He pined for his Italian love and never married, but found family joy with his two younger brothers and their wives, children and grandchildren.
After the War, Mort worked in various jobs including a stint in the Information Booth at Grand Central Station. Because he lived frugally and invested wisely, he was able to retire at a very young age. However, he later realized he needed a job in order to have health insurance. As a result, he took a job with the New York City subway system. He was originally hired to give directions to people calling in for help in navigating the system. But because he loved to share his knowledge of the city, he would also tell callers where and what to eat at their destinations and what little known sights they should see while there. As a result, his calls often lasted longer than management thought they should, and he was demoted to being a token vendor. (At that time, subway riders paid their fares by buying metal tokens from a subway worker housed in a small, subterranean cage.) He was always grateful for the fact that the non-Jewish subway employees worked on the Jewish High Holy Days, and he returned the favor by volunteering on all the Christian holidays. When he earned his pension and became eligible for Medicare, he retired again and never went back to work.
While he was a token seller, he examined the coins tendered for payment when time permitted. If he thought a coin was numismatically interesting, he put one of his own coins of equal value in the till and collected the interesting coin in its place. He must have had a good eye, because those coins paid for the fellowship established in his name. Mort (and a wealth of family and City knowledge) died on November 10, 2002.
