Stroum Lectures 2024: The Complexities of Jewish Friendships with Marion Kaplan

This talk will focus on grassroots social interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans and, where possible, on the feelings these evoked among Jews - both heartening and discouraging. Antisemitism set limits on Jewish success and also the boundaries against which Jews pushed relentlessly - and often successfully. Although the lecture will focus on Jews, moments of acceptance and animosity provide a vantage point from which to study the diversity of German society in this era as well.
Marion Kaplan is the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History Emerita at NYU. She is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for “The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany” (1991), “Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany” (1998), and “Gender and Jewish History” (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for “Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua” (2008). Her other monographs include: “The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany; Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945″ (ed.); and “Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45” (2020).