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Moses Rischin

American historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ6915926
Source-derived summary

Moses Rischin (1925-2020) was an American historian, author, lecturer, editor, and emeritus professor of history at San Francisco State University. He coined the phrase new Mormon history in a 1969 article of the same name.

Rischin is considered an authority on American ethnic and immigration history and a pioneer in the field of American Jewish history. 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.

Biography

Rischin was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. His undergraduate studies were at Brooklyn College. Harvard University awarded him a Ph.D. in 1957.

Ruschin became a professor at San Francisco State University in 1964. 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. 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.

Editorial summary

“Moses Rischin” enters the record as american historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moses, Rischin and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1925, 2020, 1969, 1957—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1925-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Moses, Rischin and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Moses Rischin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moses, Rischin and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6915926. VIAF identifies the subject as 104823083. The Library of Congress control number is n80067615. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2020, 1969 and 1957.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Moses Rischin”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Moses Rischin primary sources, Moses Rischin archive and Moses research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Moses Rischin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.