Dalia Wassner Lectures on A Pre-Revolutionary Cuban Memoir and the Creation of Pan-American Jewish Organizations

This talk sheds light on the lasting legacy of the early Jewries of the Americas in creating pan-American Jewish organizations. It explores the legacy of early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic models of modernity, evidenced by Sephardic Port Jews, in crafting transnational organizations like the JDC and B’nai Brith in the 20th century. Centered on an unpublished memoir written by Jacob Brandon Maduro in 1954 Havana, the talk offers a unique hemispheric view of Jews in the Americas, narrated in the aftermath of WWII and the establishment of the State of Israel.

This program is part of the JDC Archives webinar series The Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Experience in the Twentieth Century.

Dalia Wassner, Ph.D. is a historian whose research and teaching is dedicated to integrating the academic fields of Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies and Diaspora Studies. Dr. Wassner is the author of Harbinger of Modernity: Marcos Aguinis and the Democratization of Argentina (Boston: Brill, 2014), the guest-editor of the inaugural issue of Latin American Jewish Studies, and has published her scholarship in numerous academic journals including Contemporary Jewry, Iberian and Latin American Studies, Latin American Jewish Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Modern Jewish Studies.