book talk
LBI Book Club, Volume IV: The German Bride by Joanna Hershon – Live on Zoom
The German Bride, by Joanna Hershon, begins in Berlin in 1861. Eva Frank, a 16-year-old Jewess, has her portrait painted, which leads to an indiscretion that has devastating consequences. Desperate to escape a painful situation, Eva marries Abraham Shein, an ambitious merchant who has returned home to Germany for the first time in a decade since establishing himself in the American West. The young bride leaves Berlin and its ghosts for an unfamiliar life halfway across the world, traversing the icy waters of the Atlantic and the rugged, sweeping terrain of the Santa Fe Trail.
Though Eva’s existence in the rough and burgeoning community of Sante Fe, New Mexico, is a far cry from her life as a daughter of privilege, she soon begins to settle into the mystifying town. But this new setting cannot keep at bay the overwhelming memories of her former life, nor can it protect her from an increasing threat to her own safety that will force Eva to make a fateful decision.
Join LBI and author Joanna Hershon on August 18th at 2:00 PM EDT in discussing this fascinating novel, which was also shaped in part by Hershon's research at the Leo Baeck Institute. The Zoom information will be sent via email before the event.
Author
Joanna Hershon is the author of five novels: St. Ivo (Farrar, Straus & Giroux April 2020), Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride and A Dual Inheritance (Ballantine Books). Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the literary anthologies Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot, and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories. Her two most recent novels are A Dual Inheritance and St. Ivo, a contemporary suspense novel set in New York City. She teaches in the Creative Writing department at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, painter Derek Buckner, their twin sons and daughter. Learn more about Hershon and her work on her website.
Ticket Info: Free; register at eventbrite.com/e/lbi-book-club-vol-iv-the-german-bride-by-joanna-hershon-featuring-author-tickets-113666258840 to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
Jennifer Mendelsohn is the founder of #resistancegenealogy, a social media movement that’s garnered international attention by using genealogical and historical records to fight disinformation and honor America’s immigrant past. In this session she’ll talk about her path to becoming an “accidental activist.” She’ll also detail how her genealogical adventures have helped reunite long lost family members, debunked decades-old family fairy tales (Did you know no names were changed at Ellis Island?) and led to shocking, poignant and sometimes hilarious revelations.
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: Pay what you wish; register at mendelsohn.bpt.me or 800-838-3006 to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
lecture
lecture
LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES: Miniatures & Colonial America – Live on Zoom
About the Series:
A new National Endowment for the Humanities CARES grant enables AJHS to bring curated objects and documents straight to you through new digital storytelling methods. In these live interactive Zoom sessions, you’ll see documents close up and pose questions to archivists and historians about what you are examining.
Ticket Info: Free; register at forms.office.com to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
lecture
lecture
LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rosh Hashanah Recipes – Live on Zoom
About the Series:
A new National Endowment for the Humanities CARES grant enables AJHS to bring curated objects and documents straight to you through new digital storytelling methods. In these live interactive Zoom sessions, you’ll see documents close up and pose questions to archivists and historians about what you are examining.
Ticket Info: Free; register at forms.office.com to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
lecture
panel discussion
Join Elisheva Carlebach, Deborah Dash Moore, Dara Horn, and Itamar Borochov in a discussion about Confronting Modernity, 1750–1880, Vol. 6 of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, edited by Elisheva Carlebach.
Hear voices rarely included in Jewish culture, such as that of Roza, a multilingual Jewish midwife and that of a Jewish soldier during the American Civil War. Learn about the powerful religious music inspiring artists of today. Explore passionate Jewish debates on all sides of religious and political issues, including such fundamental matters as private property and the institution of slavery.
What happens to our understanding of Jewish civilization when those who are often marginalized move to the center of the story? Discover the unexpected breadth of Jewish culture.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; reservation required at posen.bpt.me or 800-838-3006 to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
panel discussion
book talk
People of the Book Club: The World That We Knew – Live on Zoom
Go behind the stories and peer inside the archives at our book discussion, led by Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History. This session will feature a discussion of The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman, a work of historical fiction and magical realism set in 1941, that follows three young women as they flee from Berlin into France to escape the Nazi regime. The discussion will be followed by a show and tell with archivist Michael Simonson, sharing documents and artworks from LBI’s collections that are connected to the setting and themes of the book.
“[A] hymn to the power of resistance, perseverance, and enduring love in dark times…gravely beautiful…Hoffman the storyteller continues to dazzle.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES
Participants will need to obtain their own copy to read before the discussion.
Ticket Info: Free, registration required at hoffman.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
book talk
panel discussion
Omer Bartov, Attina Grossman and Daniel Mendelsohn in conversation with Natalia Aleksiun in our Opening Panel
In a series of discussions with leading scholars of modern Jewish history and the Holocaust, our new "Family Affairs" series explores researching and writing about Jewish experience from a distinctively personal perspective.
We will also discuss projects in the making, with scholars who are currently working on their books that either trace their family history or take this connection as a point of departure for their research. Despite their different disciplinary approaches and geographic scope, what these scholars share is the challenge of life-writing about close relatives. How does this experience change their thinking about Jewish history and their experience of writing it? What do these family affairs reveal to them in different ways?
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; registration required at familyaffairs.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom webinar
Presented by:
panel discussion
lecture
LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES: Hank Greenberg and Yom Kippur – Live on Zoom
About the Series:
A new National Endowment for the Humanities CARES grant enables AJHS to bring curated objects and documents straight to you through new digital storytelling methods. In these live interactive Zoom sessions, you’ll see documents close up and pose questions to archivists and historians about what you are examining.
Ticket Info: Free; register at forms.office.com to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
lecture
conversation
Natalia Aleksiun in conversation with Samuel Kassow
Natalia Aleksiun and Samuel Kassow discuss the legacies of Jewish historians before the Holocaust who wrote both academic and popular history for their community and engaged in creating a sense of Polish-Jewish belonging, while also fighting for their rights as an ethnic minority. What shaped their sense of both scholarly and communal mission? How relevant is their work to writing Jewish history today and to our understanding of the modern Jewish experience in East Central Europe?
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; registration required at conscioushistory.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom webinar
Presented by:
conversation
lecture
LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES: Sukkah in the Sky – Live on Zoom
About the Series:
A new National Endowment for the Humanities CARES grant enables AJHS to bring curated objects and documents straight to you through new digital storytelling methods. In these live interactive Zoom sessions, you’ll see documents close up and pose questions to archivists and historians about what you are examining.
Ticket Info: Free; register at forms.office.com to receive a link to the Zoom program
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
Derek Penslar will discuss his book Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader with Jonathan Gribetz
About the book: The life of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was as puzzling as it was brief. How did this cosmopolitan and assimilated European Jew become the leader of the Zionist movement? How could he be both an artist and a statesman, a rationalist and an aesthete, a stern moralist yet possessed of deep, and at times dark, passions? And why did thousands of Jews, many of them from traditional, observant backgrounds, embrace Herzl as their leader?
Drawing on a vast body of Herzl's personal, literary, and political writings, historian Derek Penslar shows that Herzl's path to Zionism had as much to do with personal crises as it did with antisemitism. Once Herzl devoted himself to Zionism, Penslar shows, he distinguished himself as a consummate leader—possessed of indefatigable energy, organizational ability, and electrifying charisma. Herzl became a screen onto which Jews of his era could project their deepest needs and longings.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; registration required at herzl.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom webinar
Presented by:
book talk
lecture
Speaker: Sara Halpern
Facing an escalating demand for entry into the United States by German-speaking Jews in Shanghai in early 1941, the United States Consulate called the JDC for help. No one forewarned Laura Margolis, a translator for immigration interviews, about the Jewish refugees’ living conditions: over 16,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland desperate for food and housing. She set up a new JDC office. Under four directorships, four different regimes, and two wars, the JDC Shanghai office stood as a rock for Jewish refugees for a decade.
Drawing from the JDC Archives, testimonies, and memoirs, this lecture offers a tale of how the JDC Shanghai office, as both a transnational American and an international Jewish relief organization, and its ingenious directors navigated the regimes of the treaty port controlled by multiple powers, the Japanese puppet government, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Mao Zedong. Hailed by the senior administration in New York, the “Shanghai job” was one of the most difficult in the world. In contrast to Europe during the same period, the small, isolated JDC Shanghai office had to rely on the goodwill of the various consulates and local authorities to assist with the Jewish refugees’ survival and emigration to other destinations.
Closed captioning will be available during this program.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; registration required at halpern.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom webinar
Presented by:
lecture
discussion
In a series of discussions with leading scholars of modern Jewish history and the Holocaust, our new "Family Affairs" series explores researching and writing about Jewish experience from a distinctively personal perspective.
We will also discuss projects in the making, with scholars who are currently working on their books that either trace their family history or take this connection as a point of departure for their research. Despite their different disciplinary approaches and geographic scope, what these scholars share is the challenge of life-writing about close relatives. How does this experience change their thinking about Jewish history and their experience of writing it? What do these family affairs reveal to them in different ways?
Meri-Jane Rochelson and Devin E. Naar will discuss their projects and personal histories in Ashkenazi and Sephardi contexts, in conversation with Natalia Aleksiun.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; registration required at familyaffairs2.bpt.me to receive a link to the Zoom webinar
Presented by:
discussion
