Tuesday, May 10
7:00pm to 8:00pm4069 Spokane Ln., UW
Seattle WA 98105
What has been at stake in American Jewish history’s denial of a “Jewish Question” — that is, the question of how a modern, liberal nation committed to individual citizenship can absorb or tolerate a collectively defined (and often maligned) group like the Jews?
Historian Lila Corwin Berman looks at questions of Jews' citizenship and belonging in the United States over the course of American history.
Berman explains that a triumphalist view of American liberalism, and a willful neglect of its exclusions, produced the foundational narratives of American Jewish history as an “adventure in freedom” for Jews in the United States. By liberating the field of American Jewish history from its disavowal of a Jewish Question, she suggests that the story of American Jews can be transformed to have broader range and significance.
This lecture is part of the Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies series, America's Jewish Question.
