In 1860, a group of French Jews created the first permanent international Jewish organisation, the Alliance Israélite Universelle. They were soon joined in their endeavour to defend coreligionists around the world by the prominent French Jewish lawyer and statesman Adolphe Crémieux (1796-1880). Under his leadership, the elite of French Jewry tried – and sometimes managed – to improve the legal situation of Jews in the successor states to the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe and in French colonies in North Africa.

Emerging in 16th century Prague, the Jewish musical guild-member, the klezmer became a unique cultural feature of the largest transnational Jewish culture of modern times - the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe.  Much of the musical and choreographic history of the Ashkenazim is embedded in the klezmer repertoire, which functioned as a kind of non-verbal communal memory.

What does biography allow us to see that other approaches might lead us to overlook? What do individual life histories reveal and make clear about the wider contexts around them? How do biographies allow us to see across real and imagined boundaries? Taking these questions as its starting point, my talk will highlight how biography can alter our methodologies and shift our perspectives.

Film Screening and Discussion with the Director and Writer

You are cordially invited to the next session of the Jewish Studies film screening series on Tuesday 20 March at 6.00 PM in CEU, 103 Tiered - Nádor 15.

1945

(2017)

by

Director: Ferenc Török

12 August 1945, 11 AM. Two mysterious strangers dressed in black appear at the railway station of a Hungarian village. Within a few hours, everything changes.

The Central European University Jewish Studies Program cordially invites you to a lecture by

Peter C. Appelbaum

(Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine)

THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM
cordially invites you to a lecture by

Daniel Staetsky

(Institute for Jewish Policy Research)

The Central European University
Jewish Studies Program and the Department of International Relations

cordially invite you to a lecture by

Yoav Galai

(Central European University)