Eric Mandell (1902-1988) was a cantor, educator and collector of Jewish synagogue and popular music. After escaping the Holocaust and internment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Mandell immigrated to England and then the United States. In Philadelphia, Mandell became the music director of Har Zion Temple, established the music department at Gratz College, and donated his large collection of Jewish music materials to Gratz College in 1970. In 2023, Gratz College gifted Mandell’s archival collection, bound music manuscripts and printed books to the University of Pennsylvania as the “Gratz-Mandell” gift. The Eric Mandell collection of Jewish music material will be available and a finding aid published in the coming months.

This presentation will introduce the audience to some of the female and BIPOC composers in the Eric Mandell collection of Jewish music material. Throughout history, female and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) composers have largely been left out of history and forgotten, with much of their music not performed today. Out of the over 550 composers found in the Mandell collection, only twenty of them are women or BIPOC. Most of these composers have Wikipedia pages or obituaries in the New York Times, but some of them have no information concerning their life or music online or in academic material. This presentation will include photographs of their sheet music found in the collection as well as any music recordings I could find of their music from the collection.

About the speaker

Hope Jones is the Judaica project archivist at the Kislak and the Katz Centers. She continues to process the Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica, and is currently working with general Judaica and Jewish music collections. She received her BA in History from Bryn Mawr College and her MLIS, with a concentration in archives management, from Simmons University.