Emory@Shearith – The Shtetl: An Anatomy

Congregation Shearith Israel’s Emory@Shearith series continues with a free morning program with Dr. Eric Goldstein, Associate Professor in Emory’s Department of History and Institute for Jewish Studies, presenting on the topic “The Shtetl: An Anatomy“. Coffee and cookies will be served. Register below.

The talk will be an examination of what exactly an Eastern European “shtetl” was, using original source documents from a town in Lithuania which Dr. Goldstein is researching. The intention is to bust some romantic myths about the “shtetl” that are prevalent in popular culture and present a greater understanding of why Jews were living in small towns and how life there worked.

Dr. Goldstein teaches American Jewish history and culture, modern Jewish history, and American social and cultural history (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). He was the Director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies (TIJS) for over a decade. He is the Author of The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, 2006) and his dissertation was entitled “Race and the Construction of Jewish Identity in America, 1875-1945.”