The American Jewish Experience, with Lee Shai Weissbach
Scholar Lee Shai Weissbach, Ph.D., will explore the lasting impact of Jewish life in small-town America when he speaks at 天美传媒视频无限制观看 on Thursday, December 5, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public, the talk, which will be accompanied by intriguing visual images, is sponsored by 天美传媒视频无限制观看鈥檚 Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies. It will take place in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room.
Dr. Weissbach, professor of history at the University of Louisville, will describe how the smaller Jewish communities of the United States came into being and will consider some of the characteristics that made them different from the Jewish communities of America鈥檚 large and midsize cities.
鈥淏y the 1920s, there were some five hundred smaller cities and towns in the United States with Jewish populations of at least 100 but fewer than 1,000, and the history of these smaller Jewish centers must be taken into account if we are to understand the richness and complexity of the American Jewish experience and appreciate the diversity of small-town society in times past,鈥 said Dr. Weissbach, who edited a special issue of the journal Jewish History on the topic of 鈥淪ynagogue Architecture in Context.鈥
Dr. Weissbach served as chair of the History Department at the University of Louisville, where he was associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he was awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and in 2006 he spent a year as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Haifa in Israel.
His recent publications include 鈥淛ewish Life in Small-Town America: A History鈥 (Yale University Press, 2005), and 鈥淎 Jewish Life on Three Continents,鈥 an edited and annotated version of his grandfather鈥檚 memoir (Stanford University Press, 2013). Professor Weissbach received a bachelor鈥檚 degree from the University of Cincinnati and聽a doctorate from Harvard.
There is limited seating. Call (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066 to reserve a seat.
Photo is of a synagogue in Helena, Montana in 1890, which will be discussed at the talk.
