Jews in the Era of Mass Migration with Professor Rebecca Kobrin

Join us for a landmark virtual series as we commemorate 250 years of the Jewish experience in America, exploring the profound ways Jewish identity and the American story have shaped one another. Through a series of monthly conversations with the nation’s leading historians, we will journey from the arrival of the first colonial settlers to the vibrant, diverse communities of the modern era.

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of Jews, along with other Europeans, decided to uproot themselves from their places of birth and seek their fortunes in new homes around the world. This decision created new cultural and demographic centers for world Jewry, particularly in the New World, where by 1920, New York City represented the densest urban concentration of Jews anywhere in the world.  How did these Jewish migrants reshape America? This lecture will explore these questions as it considers the role migration played in reshaping Jewish life along with American culture, politics and daily life.

More About Rebecca Korbin

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History. She works in the fields of immigration history, urban studies, business history, East European history and American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She received her B.A. (1994) from Yale University and her Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Pennsylvania.  She served as the Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University (2002-2004) and the American Academy of Jewish Research Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University (2004-6).  Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2010) was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize (2012).  She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), Salo Baron: Using the Past to Shape the Future of Jewish Studies in America (Columbia University Press, 2022) and is co-editor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).  In 2015, she was awarded Columbia University’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her outstanding teaching and graduate student mentoring.  Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation: East European Immigrant Bankers and American Finance, 1870-1930 (Harvard University Press, 2024), looks at the lost world of immigrant banking and brings together the literature on American banking, East European Jewish history, and immigration studies.  She is one of the principal investigators leading the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.  

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

So how does this all work? 

• By purchasing our 250 Years of Jewish Life in America series, you are gaining access to a year’s worth of events with the nation’s top Jewish historians. You will be able to watch them all live on Zoom, and they will also be recorded for later viewing. Each event will be one hour long.

Can I purchase a ticket to individual events if I don’t want to buy the full package? 

• Yes. (But the entire package for just $54 is quite a deal!)

How many events will there be?

• At least eight, spread out throughout the year.

What if I have more questions about how this works? 

• You can email events@70facesmedia.org.