conversation
Rembrandt’s Legacy: A Personal Conversation
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik moderates a discussion on Rembrandt’s legacy between Thomas Kaplan, philanthropist and private collector, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of Northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at yu.edu/Rembrandt
Presented by:
conversation
jewish genealogical society programs at cjh
The Sugihara Refugee Story: Survivors and Those Without Whom This Story Would Not Be Told
Most Jewish genealogists know the story of Chiune Sugihara, the "Japanese Schindler", who issued over 2,000 Japanese transit visas that enabled many Jews to escape war torn Europe in the summer of 1940. But there is more to the story. There were many people-Europeans, Americans, Japanese- who helped to save these people. We will identify some of them and talk about their exploits. We will trace one women's journey around the world, documenting her journey using genealogical methods and records.
Mark Halpern was a businessman who lived in Japan. While on business in Poland, he became interested in his roots. Now retired, Mark works with JRI-Poland, JewishGen, IAJGS, and Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Philadelphia. He chaired the program committee for the 2009 and 2013 IAJGS conferences. He received the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Ticket Info: $5 at the door; free for JGS members
Presented by:
jewish genealogical society programs at cjh
lecture
Eugen Bárkány: A Pioneer of Jewish Heritage Preservation in Slovakia
Eugen Bárkány (1885–1967) was a civil engineer and successful entrepreneur during the interwar period – and passionate collector in Eastern Slovakia. In 1928, he became a director of the Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov, which was a private initiative of the Jewish museum association, which Bárkány chaired. The museum assembled a remarkable collection, which survived the war and from 1952–1993 was stored at the State Jewish Museum in Prague, before it was returned to the Jewish Community of Prešov.
Bárkány hid in Budapest in 1942–1945 and returned to Prešov in 1945, where he was subsequently persecuted by the Communist regime, which expelled him from his city. In 1955, Bárkány settled down in Bratislava, where he lived in humble conditions. He continued his survey of Jewish heritage and travelled extensively around Slovakia. In Bratislava, Bárkány assembled another Judaica collection in the Neolog synagogue, and in 1966 a new Jewish museum was planned. This project was not fulfilled, the synagogue was demolished in 1969 and the collection deposited at the Slovak National Museum, from where it returned only in 2002. In 2012, the Jewish Community Museum was established in Bratislava´s only synagogue, which remains in use as an Orthodox house of worship. Since 2016, the Eugen Bárkány Prize has been awarded annually for achievements in Jewish heritage preservation by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia.
The Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava dedicated in 2018 and 2019 two exhibition projects to Eugen Bárkány and Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov. The precious collection has remained in the research and exhibition focus of the Museum.
The Museum’s director Maroš Borský will give an overview of Bárkány’s remarkable life, the collection he built, and its future. He will also discuss current synagogue restoration projects in Slovakia and major achievements of the past decade.
This event is co-sponsored by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, the Consulate General of Slovakia in New York, and the Jewish Cultural Institute, Bratislava
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at presov.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
lecture
conversation
Ten Years Without Avrom Sutzkever
Remembered as “the greatest poet of the Holocaust,” a Partisan fighter, and a book smuggler, Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever’s legacy as a poet for poetry’s sake deserves more attention.
Sutzkever was a member of Eastern Europe’s last literary circle Yung yidish, and also a kindred spirit of New York’s in zikh movement of introspective Yiddish poets. Rejecting politics in poetry, Sutzkever transcended the stylistic boundaries of his peers and drew inspiration from outside of the Yiddish world including from Russian and Polish Romantic and symbolist poets. Sutzkever’s poetry is known for its Neo-romantic interest in nature and wonder, and for his virtuosic, inventive use of the Yiddish language. Having left behind an oeuvre which includes more than two dozen books of poetry, fiction, and a memoir on his experience in the Vilna Ghetto, Sutzkever is also remembered for his work for almost 50 years as founder and editor of Tel Aviv’s premiere Yiddish Magazine, Di goldene keyt.
Join YIVO for an evening critically engaging with Sutzkever’s poetic legacy including recitations of his poetry, and discussion with literary scholar Ruth Wisse, translator Barbara Harshav, and poet Irena Klepfisz.
Ticket Info: $15 general; $10 YIVO members, students at yivo.org/Sutzkever2020 or 917-606-8290
Presented by:
conversation
keynote, panel discussion & film/discussion
Stories of New York: City College
The "Jewish Harvard" and a World of Ideas
Courtesy of CCNY ArchivesThis February and March, join historians, writers, filmmakers, and alumni at the Center for Jewish History for a series of discussions and films about City College, its rich Jewish history, and its transformative role in the lives of so many.
Part I: The “Jewish Harvard” and a World of Ideas
“From first day to last I felt privileged to be a student at City. I experienced City first with awe, then with pleasure, and finally with love.” Vivian Gornick, CCNY 1957
Its dazzling list of alumni includes playwrights and poets, politicians and journalists, engineers, scientists, teachers, and Nobel Prize winners. The City College of New York was established to provide children of working class and immigrant families access to a tuition-free, merit-based higher education. For many years, its student body was largely Jewish and for most it was “City College or nothing” at a time when quotas and cost kept Jews out of more prestigious institutions. Join us for Part I: The "Jewish Harvard" and a World of Ideas. Enjoy all-star line-up of speakers and great stories in the morning, and an award-winning film in the afternoon. Program schedule below.
| 10:00am | Coffee in the Great Hall at the Center for Jewish History |
| 10:30am | Welcome The Rank and File of Sturdy Sons and Eventually Daughters Jeffrey S. Gurock, Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, CCNY 1971 |
| 11:15am | An Engine of Transformation CCNY alumni panel discussion with: Joseph Berger, CCNY 1966 Ralph Blumenthal, CCNY 1963 Sid Davidoff, CCNY 1960 Vivian Gornick, CCNY 1957 Irena Klepfisz, CCNY 1962 |
| 12:30pm | Stories from Our Past, Dreams of Our Future Dr. Vincent Boudreau President, The City College of New York Assistant Professor Chemistry; Director, Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College |
| 1:00pm | Light Lunch Galleries Open Center Tour |
| 2:00pm | Arguing the World Film screening and talkback with filmmaker Joseph Dorman, Princeton Professor David Bell, University of Oklahoma Assistant Professor, Ronnie Grinberg. Moderated by Barry Gewen. |
Ticket Info: $15 general; $12 CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at citycollege.bpt.me
About the Speakers:
Keynote Speaker Jeffrey S. Gurock, CCNY '71 was a history major and a four year letterman on the college's lacrosse team where he was the recipient of the Abraham Kalman Scholar-Athlete award. In 2015,he was awarded the Townsend Harris Medal from CCNY in recognition of his post-graduate work. Presently the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and former chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society, Professor Gurock is the author or editor of 22 books including Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City 1920-2010 (NYU Press, 2012) which received the “Book of the Year Award” from the National Jewish Book Council; The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline and Revival of a Jewish Community (NYU Press, 2016), and Parkchester: A Bronx Tale of Race and Ethnicity (NYU Press, 2019).
David A. Bell received an AB from Harvard in History and Literature, and an MA and PhD from Princeton in History. The son of Daniel Bell (profiled in Arguing the World) David is a specialist in the history of early modern Europe. He has taught at Yale, Johns Hopkins (where he also served as Dean of Faculty), and since 2010 has held the Lapidus chair in the History Department at Princeton. Among his awards and fellowships are a Guggenheim, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. He is the author of six books, including The Cult of the Nation in France and The First Total War. In 2020, Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish his latest book, Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. He is a regular contributor to The Nation and The New York Review of Books.
Joseph Berger, CCNY '66, a former reporter for The Campus, was a New York Times reporter, columnist, and editor for over 30 years, writing about education, religion, New York City, Israel and the Middle East. For the previous 14 years he had been a reporter for the New York Post and Newsday. In 2011, Joe was honored with the Peter Kihss Award for a distinguished career given by the Society of Silurians, the city’s oldest press club. Retired from the Times since 2014, Joe is now a contributing writer and teaches two urban affairs courses at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College. Joe is the author of four books, including his memoir, Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust. Called an "extraordinary memoir" by New York Times, it was named a Times notable book of the year in 2001. His next book, a biography of Elie Wiesel will be published by Yale University Press in 2020.
Ralph Blumenthal, CCNY '63 was Editor-in-Chief of The Campus and a stringer for The New York Times at City College where he majored in English. After graduation, he attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism ('64) and went on to the Times where he worked for the next 45 years. Over the course of his career, Ralph was a metro reporter, foreign correspondent, investigative reporter, crime writer, culture reporter and Southwest Bureau Chief based in Houston. He was also on the metro team that won a Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting of the 1992 terrorist truck bombing of the World Trade Center. After retiring from The New York Times in 2009, Ralph was named a Distinguished Lecturer at Baruch College where he taught journalism and currently supervises historic collections in the Library Archives. He is the author of five non-fiction books, and a sixth, about a Harvard professor who studied encounters with UFOs and aliens, is scheduled for publication in 2021.
Sid Davidoff, CCNY ’60, grew up in Queens and attended Baruch College, also known as CCNY “downtown.” A member of the City College wrestling team, he was active in student government and graduated with a degree in public administration. Sid earned his J.D. from New York University in 1963 and was administrative assistant to New York Mayor John V. Lindsay for seven years. Recognized as one of New York’s best known attorneys in special City and State agency work, Sid is currently Chair of the Administrative Law and Government Relations groups at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP. Among his many accomplishments, Sid was a Chubb Fellow at Yale University, a lecturer to the special Root-Tilden students at New York University School of Law, and also played a divorce lawyer on an episode of The Sopranos.
Joseph Dorman is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and the founder of Riverside Films. He wrote and directed the critically acclaimed documentary, Arguing the World about the controversial sixty-year political journey of the eminent political writers and thinkers, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer. Described by The New York Times as “enthralling… one of the deepest portraits of… of ideas ever filmed,” the film won a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence and was short-listed for the Academy Awards. Joseph also directed Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011), Colliding Dreams (2016) about the controversial history of Zionism, and co-directed Moynihan, a documentary about the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s lifelong fight against poverty in America. A writer for The New York Times Book Review and other publications, Joseph is also the author of Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in their Own Words (2001) and co-editor of the forthcoming When Ideas Mattered, The Nathan Glazer Reader.
Barry Gewen, who has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Harvard, has been an editor at The New York Times Book Review for over 30 years. He has written for a variety of publications, including The Times, The New Republic, Dissent, The National Interest and The American Conservative. His first book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World, will be published by Norton this spring.
Vivian Gornick, CCNY '57 is a renowned memoirist, essayist, and biographer. Born in the Bronx, she received her BA from City College and her MA from NYU in 1960. After teaching English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1966–1967 and at Hunter College in 1967–1968, Vivian worked as a reporter for The Village Voice from 1969 to 1977 where she wrote prolifically about feminism and the women's movement. She is the author of twelve books including Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (2013), Fierce Attachments (1987), The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2005), The Men in My Life (2008), and The Odd Woman in the City (2015). The New York Times recently selected Fierce Attachments as the "#1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years. Vivian lives in New York City.
Ronnie Grinberg is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, and a core faculty member of OU’s Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the New York intellectuals tentatively titled, Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals, under contract with Princeton University Press. Dr. Grinberg is a member of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society and contributes to the Society of U.S. Intellectual History, among other professional organizations. She received her doctorate in American history from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University.
Credit: Linda EberIrena Klepfisz, CCNY ’62, was born in the Warsaw Ghetto and spent the war in a Polish orphanage. She came to New York with her mother in 1949 and they settled in the Bronx. At City College Irena studied English and Yiddish and after graduating, she entered the University of Chicago where she received her PhD. A poet, author, Yiddish translator, teacher and feminist/lesbian activist, Irena co-founded the feminist magazine, Conditions, served as Yiddish editor for the feminist Bridges magazine, and co-edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Woman's Anthology and A Jewish Woman's Call for Peace.She is the author of A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (poetry) and Dreams of an Insomniac (essays). For ten years, Irena taught in the college program at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women and for twenty-two years taught Jewish Women's Studies at Barnard College. Among her many honors, Irena is a recipient of an NEA fellowship and NYFA grant in poetry, was a finalist for the poetry Lambda Award, and recently received the Dreaming in Yiddish Prize from the Adrienne Cooper Fund.
Lev Sviridov, CCNY ’05 immigrated to the United States as a child from the former Soviet Union. He studied chemistry, mathematics, physics, and pottery at The City College of New York and also served in student government where he was elected President. Following his graduation, Lev attended the University of Oxford and completed his D.Phil. in Inorganic Chemistry as a Rhodes' Scholar. He serves on the boards of The Foundation for City College, Concord Consortium, and Human Rights First. Currently, he is the Director of the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College of CUNY.
Presented by:
keynote, panel discussion & film/discussion
lecture and concert
What is the Cantorial “Golden Age”?
Among aficionados and practitioners, the term cantorial "Golden Age" draws to mind a discrete body of work recorded by a well-known cadre of Eastern European cantors working in Europe and America in the 1900s-30s. This narrative of a Golden Age was shaped by cantors working in tandem with commercial distribution networks, advertisements in print media, and the efforts of intellectuals and impresarios who worked to establish a canon of stars and hit records through journalism, liner notes and show-business style promotion. Remarkably, recordings of cantors singing through-composed recitative settings on liturgical prayer texts achieved the status of mass media entertainment among Jewish listeners in the early 20th century.
However, the “Golden Age” of recorded cantorial music did not come about without pushback and controversy. Critics of recorded cantorial music saw new technology as a contamination of tradition that vulgarized sacred sound through commerce and the displacement of the liturgy from its temporal-spatial location in ritual contexts. While communal leaders accused cantorial recording stars of degrading sacred art, the cantorial recording stars positioned themselves as defenders of an older strand of Jewish folk prayer music that had been displaced by the Sulzerian Romantic choral music which had become normative in elite urban synagogues. Recorded cantorial music offers a populist, hyper-emotional memory work that interpolates Jewish listeners into a sense of self-recognition by performing a theatrical imagined ethnography of Jewish sacred folklore.
In this presentation, scholar and musician Jeremiah Lockwood will offer insights from the YIVO archival holdings that illuminate the impassioned debates among cantors and their critics in the early 20th century. He will be joined by Cantor Yoel Kohn, one of the leading young voices reviving Golden Age cantorial music, who will sing representative works from classic records.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at yivo.org/Cantors or 917-606-8290
Presented by:
lecture and concert
lecture
Family History Today: Jewish Students, Medical Globetrotters, and Persevering Women
At first, aspiring Jewish men from Galicia, Lithuania, and elsewhere ventured to Padua University to study medicine when other schools across Europe refused their admission. Then, from the end of the eighteenth century onward, Jews from Galicia attended Habsburg universities—from Lemberg/Lwów and Kraków, to Vienna, Pest and Prague. Many nineteenth-century Jewish medics influenced Galician life beyond their profession, advocating educational, religious and civic reforms. At the turn of the twentieth century, Jewish women were at the forefront of newly won access to university education, changing societal and family norms.
This presentation will take us across the countries and continents, with genealogical information illustrated by unique archival records, newspaper accounts, and maps. You don’t have to have medical practitioners among your ancestors to find this topic interesting and helpful in your family history research.
About the Speaker: Andrew Zalewski is a former professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He is the vice president of Gesher Galicia, a non-profit organization devoted to genealogical and historical research on Galicia. Andrew Zalewski has also authored two books on Austrian Galicia: Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family and Galician Portraits: In Search of Jewish Roots.
An ASL interpreter may be made available if requested in advance.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at zalewski.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
lecture
book launch
Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets
The most extreme legacies of tsarist antisemitism were pogroms and blood libels. These events were central to the Jewish experience in late tsarist Russia, the only country with widespread anti-Jewish violence in the early twentieth century. After the Soviets came to power, they claimed that they had eliminated both these phenomena. In her new revelatory book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets, Elissa Bemporad demonstrates that the Soviets’ claim was part propaganda, part reality.
In the forty-year-span from the Bolshevik Revolution to the early years of Krushchev, a living generation of Jews and non-Jews alike vividly remembered the violence of the prerevolutionary years, including the Beilis Affair, and the horrific pogroms of the Russian civil war of 1917-1921. Contrary to official Soviet claims, there were numerous blood libel accusations against Jews in the USSR, and the response to them by local authorities ranged from indifference to endorsement to fierce condemnation. By tracing the "afterlife" of pogroms and blood libels in the USSR, Legacy of Blood sheds light on the broader question of the changing position of Jews in Soviet society. In doing so, Bemporad tells the story of the ever-changing and at times ambivalent relationship between the Soviet state and the Jewish minority group.
Join us for the launch of this new book. The evening will include a presentation from Bemporad on her research followed by a conversation between Bemporad and scholar Hillel Kieval.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at https://yivo.org/Legacy-of-Blood or 917-606-8290
Presented by:
book launch
book talk
Prince of the Press: David Oppenheim and His Library
Historian Joshua Teplitsky will introduce his new book about one of the world's largest collections of Jewish books, and the man who used his collection to cultivate power, prestige, and political influence.
David Oppenheim (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His remarkable collection testifies to the myriad connections Jews maintained with each other across political borders, and the contacts between Christians and Jews that books facilitated. From contact with the great courts of European nobility to the poor of Jerusalem, his family ties brought him into networks of power, prestige, and opportunity that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Containing works of law and literature alongside prayer and poetry, his library served rabbinic scholars and communal leaders, introduced old books to new readers, and functioned as a unique source of personal authority that gained him fame throughout Jewish society and beyond. The story of his life and library brings together culture, commerce, and politics, all filtered through this extraordinary collection. Based on the careful reconstruction of an archive that is still visited by scholars today, Joshua Teplitsky’s book offers a window into the social life of Jewish books in early modern Europe.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at prince-press.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
About the Speaker:
Joshua Teplitsky is assistant professor of history at Stony Brook University. He specializes in the history of the Jews in Europe in the early modern period and in the study of books and media. He lives in New York City.
Presented by:
book talk
book talk
Stories of New York: City College
The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team
Larry GrallaThis February and March, join historians, writers, filmmakers, and alumni at the Center for Jewish History for a series of discussions and films about City College, its rich Jewish history, and its transformative role in the lives of so many.
Part II: The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team
At a school better known for intellectual achievement than athletic prowess, the 1949-1950 City College Beavers were the unlikeliest of champions. An unheralded group of Jewish and African-American city kids, the Beavers stunned the basketball world by becoming the only team in history to win both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same season. But the next year, the starting five were arrested, charged with point shaving, and engulfed in a scandal that would affect the rest of their lives. Bestselling author Matthew Goodman discusses his critically acclaimed new book, The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team, with Clyde Haberman, CCNY 1966. They are joined by former City College basketball co-captain, Ron Nadell, CCNY ’51 and former sports editor of The Campus, Mort Sheinman CCNY ’54.
Ticket Info: $15 general; $12 CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at thecitygame.bpt.me
About the Speakers:
Matthew Goodman is a New York Times bestselling author of four books of nonfiction: The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team (2019); Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World; The Sun and the Moon: Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York; and Jewish Food: The World at Table. Matthew’s books have been Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, Indie Next “Great Reads,” and Borders Original Voices selections, and have been translated into eight languages. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The American Scholar, the Harvard Review, Salon, the Forward, and many other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.
Mort Sheinman CCNY ’54, is Bronx born and raised. After attending Bronx public schools, he entered CCNY in 1950. Mort joined the student newspaper, The Campus, and during his undergraduate years he was a sportswriter, sports editor and managing editor. When he was a freshman, the CCNY basketball team made history by winning the NIT and NCAA championships and he was a sophomore when the “point-shaving” scandal broke. Mort spent his career in journalism writing for a variety of publications including the New York Daily News and Women’s Wear Daily, where he was the long-time managing editor. Mort was also the founding managing editor of W magazine. He is a long-time board member and former president of the Society of the Silurians (now called the Silurians Press Club), and he was inducted into the CCNY Communications Alumni Group Hall of Fame in 2003.
Clyde Haberman (moderator) CCNY '66, first worked at The New York Times while a student at CCNY. Having been editor-in-chief of the college newspaper The Campus, he became CCNY correspondent for the Times. In 1966, he began reporting for The New York Post, ultimately returning to The New York Times in 1977. From 1982 to 1995, Clyde was a foreign correspondent based successively in Tokyo, Rome and Jerusalem. Returning home, he wrote the twice-a-week NYC column from 1995 to 2011 and in 2009, he was part of a Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, for coverage of the prostitution scandal that led to Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation. Since 2014 he has written a regular Times column accompanying Retro Report, a series of video documentaries exploring major news stories of the past and their continuing resonance.
Clyde is also the writer and editor of The Times of the Seventies: The Culture, Politics, and Personalities That Shaped the Decade (2013 by Black Dog & Leventhal). Among other journalistic honors, he was inducted in 2015 into the New York Press Club's Hall of Fame.
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
Jewish Brick and Mortar in the Russian Capital: The Architectural Dialogue between the St. Petersburg Jewish Community and the Tsarist Metropolis
The Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellowship and the Natalie and Mendel Racolin Memorial Fellowship
In this lecture, Dr. Vladimir Levin will consider the uneasy relationship between the architectural oeuvre of the Jewish community and the capital city of the Russian Empire. Although concentrating on St. Petersburg, the talk will address questions and problems that many Jewish communities in European and American cities had to wrangle with. Every Jewish community that settled in a large or small city had to decide how to represent itself vis-à-vis that city, how prominent and visible should their representation should be; what are the ways to express Jewishness in the general cityscape and which means should be employed toward achieving this goal. The lecture will discuss how the Jews of St. Petersburg and their non-Jewish allies looked for a style that was best suited for marking their presence in the city, and how a unique convergence of architecture and manuscript illuminations was created to that end.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at yivo.org/Brick-and-Mortar or 917-606-8290
Presented by:
lecture
book launch
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays by Chava Rosenfarb
Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011) was one of the most prominent Yiddish novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Poland in 1923, she survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, immigrating to Canada in 1950 and settling in Montreal. The new book, Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays by Chava Rosenfarb, compiled and edited by Goldie Morgentaler, comprises thirteen personal and literary essays by Rosenfarb, ranging from autobiographical accounts of her childhood and experiences before and during the Holocaust to literary criticism that discusses the work of other Jewish writers, as well as two travelogues describing trips to Australia and Prague. This book marks the first time that Rosenfarb's non-fiction writings have been presented together in English, deepening the reader's understanding of an incredible Yiddish woman and her experiences as a survivor in the post-Holocaust world. Join us to celebrate the launch of this book with a talk by Goldie Morgentaler.
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer is the winner of a 2019 Canadian Jewish Literary Award.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at yivo.org/Chava-Rosenfarb or 917-606-8290
Presented by:
book launch
book talk
People of the Book Club
Go behind the stories and peer inside the archives at this new bi-monthly book discussion, led by Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History. The first session will feature a discussion of The Promised Land by Mary Antin, a celebrated 1912 memoir by a Russian-Jewish immigrant to Boston, followed by a show and tell from the Mary Antin papers as well as other archival materials related to the immigrant Jewish experience held by the American Jewish Historical Society.
Participants will need to obtain their own copy to read before the discussion. The book is available as a free download via Amazon.com, Project Gutenberg (Gutenberg.com) or NYPL. Inexpensive used copies are available for purchase via Amazon.com or abebooks.com.
Light refreshments will be served.
Ticket Info: Free, registration required at thepromisedland.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
book talk
book talk
Lives in Limbo: Jewish Refugees in Portugal, 1940–1945
Historian Marion Kaplan explores the experience of refugees from Nazi Germany in Portugal, the port of last resort once Hitler invaded France.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at portugal.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
The Rest of the Story: Finding Your Family in Online Newspapers
Janeen Bjork will share her search methodology using several case studies to illustrate the techniques of finding and preserving family items from online newspapers. She will discuss OCR (optical character recognition, the technology that allows newspapers to be searched online), and how to work around its significant failure rate. Other topics will include best practices for searching in popular newspaper resources, and websites to explore.
Janeen Bjork is a TV researcher and genealogy teacher. She has been obsessed with the information historical newspapers contain ever since she found a story about the 1894 murder of her great-great grandfather in a Syracuse, NY newspaper.
Ticket Info: $5 at the door; free for JGS members
Presented by:
lecture
film and discussion
Stories of New York: City College
Cinema and Sanctuary
Cinema and SanctuaryThis February and March, join historians, writers, filmmakers, and alumni at the Center for Jewish History for a series of discussions and films about City College, its rich Jewish history, and its transformative role in the lives of so many.
Part III: Cinema and Sanctuary
It was the first documentary film school in the United States and it began in 1942 at the City College of New York. Led for many years by the German filmmaker and refugee, Hans Richter, the school guided working-class students into prestigious film careers. The Institute of Film Techniques lasted a little less than two decades but its stunning success and lasting influence has been called one of the best-kept secrets in film history. Award-winning director and CUNY Professor Dave Davidson tells this remarkable story in Cinema and Sanctuary, a documentary he produced with current CUNY film students. Discussion with Professor Davidson, legendary filmmaker Manny Kirchheimer, and current documentary film students after the screening. Moderated by CUNY Professor Jerry Carlson.
Ticket Info: $15 general; $12 CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at cinemaandsanctuary.bpt.me
About the Speakers:
Professor Dave Davidson, the director of Cinema and Sanctuary, is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker and media educator whose work focuses on social issues, culture and the arts. Dave has directed over twenty acclaimed documentaries, many broadcast nationally on PBS. These include, A Place Out of Time-The Bordentown School (2010), Into the Light-the Furious Birth of The American Film Industry (1996), The Dancing Man-Peg Leg Bates (1992) and Cissy Houston-Sweet Inspiration (1988). He also directed A Gesture and a Word, which won Audience Choice—Best Feature Film at The Richmond International Film Festival. From 2010 to 2013, Davidson was Director of Photography and Co-Producer on the 9-part PBS series, Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook. Davidson is professor emeritus at The City College of New York (CUNY) where he was the founding director of the MFA in Media Arts Production Program.
Joann Huang, CCNY '20, a Documentary Film MFA candidate, assisted director Dave Davidson in the making of Cinema and Sanctuary. Her own work in film explores traditions within her culture. A travel enthusiast, Huang has worked since 2014 as the Creative Designer at CCNY’s Office of Institutional Advancement and Communications. She holds an MFA in Design and Technology from The New School’s Parsons School for Design and a BA in Business Communication with a specialization in Graphic Design from CUNY's Baruch College.
Manfred (Manny) Kirchheimer CCNY ‘52, graduated from the CCNY Film Institute and is profiled in Cinema and Sanctuary. An award-winning, independent filmmaker, he has been producing and directing documentaries since 1965. His films include: We Were So Beloved, Free Time, Middle Class Money, Honey, Dream of a City, My Coffee with Jewish Friends, Canners, Art Is . . .The Permanent Revolution, SprayMasters, Tall, Stations of the Elevated, Bridge High, Short Circuit, Claw, Leroy Douglas, Haiku, and Colossus on the River. His films have been shown in theaters, on television and at festivals around the world including New York, London, Jerusalem, Berlin, Edinburgh, Venice, Melbourne, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. In February 2017 he had a retrospective of his films at the Museum of Modern Art and his work has also been showcased at The Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Munich Filmmuseum, and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Recently retired as professor of film at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Kircheimer is listed in Who’s Who in Entertainment, Who’s Who in the East, and The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film.
Professor Jerry Carlson (moderator) is Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY; a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Film Studies and Comparative Literature and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. In addition to lecturing at a wide variety of universities, Professor Carlson is also an active producer, director, and writer with eleven Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created and produces the series City Cinematheque about film history, Canape about French-American cultural relations, and Nueva York (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his award-winning films include the Showtime Networks production Dirt directed by Nancy Savoca and Looking for Palladin directed by Andrzej Krakowski. In 1998 he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques. He received his BA from Williams College (B.A.) and MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.
Presented by:
film and discussion
