Emancipation, Then and Now

For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of—and indeed reactions to—the central event of that history: emancipation. In his new book and in this lecture, David Sorkin (Yale) seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel.

This is the 62nd Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture, which is endowed by Marianne C. Dreyfus and Family, the descendants of Rabbi Leo Baeck.

Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at  emancipation.bpt.me or 800-8383-3006