Jewish Life in Poland Lithuania: A Seminar with Zachary Mazur

Recorded on April 30, 2023
Please find all upcoming programming at eldridgestreet.org/events!

The Eldridge Street Synagogue, which now houses the Museum at Eldridge Street, was built by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in 1887 to herald their new life in America, and their pride in their faith and their heritage. Millions of Jews fled Eastern Europe to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but how did they end up in Eastern Europe to begin with?

Approximately eighty percent of the world's Jews have a connection to Eastern Europe, and all of them once lived in a unique country called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Join Zachary Mazur, Senior Historian at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to discuss the key question of why Jews settled in Eastern Europe and what their lives looked like there. While discussing the larger historical narrative, we will focus on the stories of those living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to paint a picture of the past long before emigration or the Holocaust.

This virtual seminar will incorporate POLIN's Core Exhibition, a journey through 1000 years of the history of Jews in Poland from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Museum at Eldridge Street: eldridgestreet.org
POLIN Museum: polin.pl/en

About the Speaker:
Zachary Mazur earned his PhD at Yale University and is currently a Senior Historian at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. His research interests include twentieth-century Eastern and Central Europe, national identity, law, and economics.