New Perspectives on European Jewish History

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A Jew in the Street: New Perspectives on European Jewish History brings together original scholarship by 17 historians, drawing on the pioneering research of their teacher and colleague, Michael Stanislawski. These essays explore a mosaic of topics in the history of modern European Jewry from early modern times to the present, including the role of Jewish participants in the European revolutions of 1848, the dynamics of Zionist and non-Zionist views in the early 20th century, the origins of a magical charm against the evil eye, and more. Collectively, these works reject ideological and doctrinal clichés, demythologize the European Jewish past, and demonstrate that early modern and modern Jews responded creatively to modern forms of culture, religion, and the state from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Contributors to this volume pose new questions about the relationship between the particular and universal, antisemitism and modernization, religious and secular life, and the bonds and competition between cultures and languages, especially Yiddish, Hebrew, and modern European languages. These investigations illuminate the entangled experiences of Jews who sought to balance the pull of communal, religious, and linguistic traditions with the demands and allure of full participation in European life.

Join YIVO for a panel discussion about this new volume with editors Nancy Sinkoff, Jonathan Karp, James Loeffler, and Howard Lupovitch.

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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

Nancy Sinkoff is the Academic Director of the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Rutgers—New Brunswick. She is author of Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (2004), recently reissued digitally with a new preface and of From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (2020; pb 2022), winner of the fall 2020 Natan Notable Book award and the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Biography. With Rebecca Cypess, she co-edited Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin (2018), winner of the outstanding book prize from the Jewish Studies and Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society. Her other edited volumes include Polish Jewish Culture Beyond the Capital: Centering the Periphery (2023, with Halina Goldberg), a volume accompanied by a website, “Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities,” devoted to little-heard instrumental and choral Polish Jewish music: polishjewishmusic.iu.edu.

Jonathan Karp is a professor of Judaic Studies and History at Binghamton University of the State University of New York (SUNY). From 2010-2013 he served as executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society. He is also the 2019 recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service. He is the author of The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe (Cambridge, 2008) and has co-edited eight volumes on a wide array of topics, most recently Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America (2024), as well as The Cambridge History of Judaism in the Early Modern Period (2017) with Adam Sutcliffe, and World War I and the Jews (2018) with Marsha Rozenblit. His forthcoming book is Chosen Surrogates: How Blacks and Jews Transformed American Popular Music.

James Loeffler is Felix Posen Professor of Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the award-winning book Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century and co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. His scholarly research explores the ties between law, culture, and politics in modern Jewish history. His writings also include The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Yale, 2010), and The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2019). He is currently at work on a biography of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish godfather of the Genocide Convention, and a forthcoming book, Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and Free Speech in Modern America (Henry Holt). He is Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

Howard Lupovitch is Professor of History and Director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University. He is the author, most recently, of Transleithanian Paradise: A History of the Budapest Jewish Community, 1738-1938 and is completing a history of the Neolog Movement.