We know that Judaism is a religion, but beyond that are Jews an ethnic group, a race, a nation? The answer—depending on when you ask—is yes to all three. While Jews have been residents of the New World since the colonial period, the question of their racial identity came into question in the 19th century when larger numbers of Jews immigrated from Central and Eastern Europe to a nation that defined much of its citizenship through the lens of race. At some point in the twentieth century, most American Jews “became white,” both in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. How that happened, and what that means, is the subject of this talk.

Nora Rubel is the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor in Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. Rubel teaches and writes on a wide variety of topics related to gender, race and ethnicity in American religion, particularly in relation to food and popular culture. She is the author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (Columbia University Press 2009), co-editor of Religion, Food and Eating in North America (CUP 2014) and the in-progress Transparent: Queering the Jewish Family on TV. She is currently completing a monograph entitled Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book.

Please click here to RSVP for the event and the Zoom link will be sent to you the day of the event: https://docs.google.com/.../1_iWps-B2N4FTzK7U8Ljv7Bh.../edit