"(Polish) Gentiles Doing Jewish stuff"....and the Jews Who Love/Hate Them"
Sunday, April 19, 2015
7:30 - 9:00pm
Beth Jacob Congregation
Jewish heritage revival in Poland is a phenomenon that has attracted a great deal of attention and provoked many controversies. Described as the world's largest Jewish cemetery and the realm of "virtual Jewishness," Poland is a space where the non-Jewish interest in things Jewish has been looked upon with particular scepticism. American cultural anthropologist Erica Lehrer ventures into this territory, both fascinating and fraught with tension, giving a fresh glimpse into the backstage of the Jewish heritage industry.
Erica Lehrer is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the departments of History and Sociology‑Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, and co‑editor of Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland, and Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places. As a curator, she produced the 2013 exhibit Souvenir, Talisman, Toy: Poland's Jewish Figurines in Kraków's Seweryn UdLehziela Ethnographic Museum, and published the accompanying catalog Lucky Jew.
This series is made possible by a generous gift in memory of Julia K. & Harold Segall. Co-sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, the Department of Anthropology; Beth Jacob Congregation.
