Virtual: ‘A Shtetl In New York? Jews from Eastern Europe and the American Immigrant Experience’

Join the Carolina Public Humanities department on April 14 at 11:00 a.m. for a virtual talk by Oskar Czendze in collaboration with Wake Technical Community College and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. Register here for the Zoom link.

In 1905 alone, more than 350,000 Jews from different social, cultural, religious, and regional backgrounds in eastern Europe lived in the small immigrant neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side. How did they make sense of themselves in this densely populated and culturally hybrid space? How did they navigate the tension between maintaining their traditions and the desire for rapid economic and social mobility? Through the lens of everyday immigrant life in New York’s Lower East Side, this talk will highlight the ways how Jews shaped and were shaped by the places they call home.

Oskar Czendze is a doctoral candidate in the history department at UNC-Chapel Hill. His research focuses on modern Jewish history, the cultural and social history of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Jewish immigrant experience in the United States. He is particularly interested in questions of belonging and place in the modern era, memory, and transnationalism.