Rachel Heimovics

Rachel, a founder and Past President of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, is a retired freelance writer and editor with great interest in American and Chicago Jewish history. She frequently lectured on Chicago Jewish and immigrant history before moving to Florida in 1984. After her move, she served as president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society. She was a member of the Board of the American Jewish Historical Society in the 1970s and 1980s. Beginning in 1998, she became the founding managing editor of Southern Jewish History, the annual peer-review journal of the Southern Jewish Historical Society.

A native of Milwaukee, Rachel graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. After two years working in the CBS newsroom in New York, she joined the public information staff of the Department of City Planning of Chicago. During that period, she became involved in the movement to save Chicago’s architectural landmarks, spent many years researching the life and work of architect Dankmar Adler, and photographed and documented the historical development of the Chicago Jewish community. After moving to Florida, she worked as writer and editor of K-12 educational materials for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. She is the author of “The Chicago Jewish Source Book,” published by Follett in 1980, and the coauthor of “The Florida Jewish Heritage Trail,” published by the Jewish Museum of Florida and the State of Florida in 2000.

Rachel is married to Matitiahu Braun, a violinist who retired from the New York Philharmonic in 2006. They reside in a suburb of Orlando. She likes to say that although she moved away from Chicago almost 40 years ago, Chicago has never moved away from her.