Fonds consists of correspondence, speeches, handwritten and typescript notes, photographs, programs and flyers for cultural and political events, newspaper and magazine articles, booklets, and ephemera created or accumulated by Sam and Manya Lipshitz regarding their professional activities and family life. Handwritten letters trace their courtship while Sam worked in Montreal and Manya studied in New York during the late 1920s. Many subsequent documents pertain to their involvement with Jewish organizations, particularly the Labour League, United Jewish Peoples Order, the New Fraternal Jewish Association, and the Canadian Jewish Congress. Sam Lipshitz's work as editor and writer is a major theme throughout the fonds, which includes correspondence and draft articles for "Vochenblatt," "Morning freiheit," and "Fraternally yours," as well as clipped stories and entire issues of these periodicals. Sam's trip to Poland in 1945 with H.M. Caiserman on behalf of the Canadian Jewish Congress is well documented through his letters to Manya, published reports, and photographs. Similar records are available for his trips to Europe, Israel, and the Soviet Union, with considerable information regarding the communist parties in these countries (such as a photograph album devoted to the Congress of the Israel Communist Party in 1949). The fonds includes correspondence, reports, speeches, photographs, and other documents pertaining to Sam's involvement with the Labor-Progressive Party, the careers of prominent communists including J.B. Salsberg, Tim Buck, Sam Carr, Fred Rose, and Albert Alexander MacLeod, tensions within the Canadian Jewish Congress over the relationship between communism and Zionism, the Lipshitzs' resignation from the communist party in 1957, Manya's campaign for a seat on the board of education in 1956, and Sam's campaign for alderman in North York in 1974 (both unsuccessful). The fonds also deals with international issues facing the Canadian Jewish community from the 1940s to the 1990s, including: the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, Nazi concentration camps in Poland during World War II, the Polish resistance movement, relief work after the war and efforts to improve living conditions and cultural life among Poland's Jews, efforts by Jews in Canada to find relatives among the survivors of concentration camps, trials of Nazi war criminals, Canada's post-war immigration policy and the campaign for Jewish emigration to Canada, the survival of anti-Semitism after the war, Palestine and an independent Israel, politics and conflict in the Middle East, the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union, Holocaust memorials, and the work of Jewish mutual benefit societies. The Lipshitzs' strong interest in literary affairs is evident through many files pertaining to Jewish writers between 1943 and 1997, which contain correspondence, biographical articles, samples of these writers' work, and speeches extolling their accomplishments made by Sam when they visited Toronto. This material also deals with the visit of writers Solomon Michoels and Itzik Feffer to New York and Toronto in 1943 to promote relations with the Soviet Union, and memorials to the Soviet writers executed in 1952 under orders from Joseph Stalin. The Lipshtizs promoted the Yiddish language and Jewish culture through their written work. The fonds includes copies of three issues of the handwritten journal, "Komunar," edited by Manya between 1922 and 1923 while living on the commune in Russia, as well as poetry written by Manya throughout her life. Her teaching notes document Manya's work at the Morris Winchevsky School, and her interest in Jewish history, song, and festivals. Photographs provide additional information on the school's activities, including the visit by singer and activist Paul Robeson in 1947. Other images in the fonds show Sam speaking at rallies, Manya's campaign for "mayor" of Camp Naivelt, and members of the Lipshitzs' extended family in various settings. The fonds also contains material about work of Trade Typesetting, and testimonials to Sam and Manya Lipshitz added to the fonds after their deaths.

Contents of the fonds were arranged by the University Archivist in consultation with Dr. Gerald Cohen and Dr. May Cohen, and are grouped in the file list under the following headings: Jewish organizations and political files, Trips to Poland, Canadian Jewish Congress, Israel, Jewish writers, General correspondence arranged chronologically, Subject files, Curriculum material and writings of Manya Lipshitz, Personal correspondence of Sam and Manya Lipshitz, Presentation items, Oversize documents, and Photographs. The fonds was accompanied by Manya Lipshitz's autobiography in Yiddish and English, several booklets and pamphlets on Jewish affairs, and copies of Jewish magazines edited or collected by Sam Lipshitz. This material has been catalogued as part of York University Libraries' Special Collections, and can be located using the Libraries' online catalogue by performing a keyword search using the phrase, "Lipshitz fonds."