13 April 2021: The Rebellion of the Daughters – Young Jewish Women and Their Religious Attitudes in Galicia around 1900

A message of welcome from
Sir Ben Helfgott, 
Life Patron of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, and former Chairman

 

“The Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies has again organised an inspiring range of events to remind us of the rich legacy of Jewish life in Poland, and in Eastern Europe more generally. Lectures, book launches, workshops and the annual conference to launch the new volume of Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry bring the state of the art in this field to a London audience. I very much look forward to join these events, many of which will also be accessible from further afield by computer.”

 

 

13 April 2021, 6pm, on zoom, with UCL IJS:
The Rebellion of the Daughters – Young Jewish Women and Their Religious Attitudes in Galicia around 1900 with Professor Rachel Manekin (University of Maryland, College Park) and Professor François Guesnet (London), chair. 

In her recent book, Rachel Manekin explores the spike in conversions among young Jewish women in Galicia around 1900. She found that the educational gender gap and intergenerational conflict were at the heart of this radical step. Manekin also discusses the belated Orthodox response and argues that these educational innovations not only kept Orthodox Jewish women within the fold but also foreclosed their opportunities for higher education.

Rachel Manekin (PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) works on the social, political, and cultural history of Galician Jewry, and the policies of the Habsburg Empire towards the Jews. She recently published Religion, Politics and the Constitutional Monarchy: The Struggle Over the Control of the Jewish Communities in Galicia, 1848-1883 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2015) and The Rebellion of the Daughters. Jewish women runaways in Habsburg Galicia (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2020).