"American Jews and Their Urban Crises" with Lila Corwin Berman

This is an Archive of a Past Event

“Between Race and Religion: Contemporary American Jewish Life” series with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Lila Corwin Berman, Associate Professor of History; Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History; and Director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University

In conversation with Michael Kahan, Associate Director of the Program on Urban Studies and Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies

In modern times, Jews emerged as consummate urban dwellers. After World War II, as American Jews migrated away from cities embroiled in so-called urban crises, they experienced a simultaneous Jewish urban crises. Who were Jews apart from their urbanism? And how would they remake their relationship to urban spaces, people, and ideals? Drawing upon her extensive research on Detroit, Lila Corwin Berman argues that contrary to the history of white flight, the story of postwar Jewish migration away from cities is one of enduring—and tension-filled—urban entanglement, marked by the politics of privatization.

Co-sponsored by the Program on Urban Studies