Rabbis, Innkeepers, Tricksters: Jewish Life in Poland-Lithuania

What do we know about the home of European Jewry?

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 Jewish life before the Great Migration that began in the 1880s.

This program is possible through the generous support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.

Admission

“Rabbis, Innkeepers, Tricksters: Jewish Life in Poland-Lithuania” is a collaboration between the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. Please register online. The program is free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. To become a member of the JGS-Pittsburgh and receive a free membership code for this program, please visit its website here.

This program will be recorded and made available to current JGS-Pittsburgh members.

About the Panelist

Dr. Zachary Mazur earned his PhD at Yale University. His forthcoming book is about Jews, Ukrainians, and Poles in Poland’s economy during the 1920s and 1930s. He is currently Senior Historian at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.