EVENT: Law and Order in Borough Park: Jewish Safety, Community-Police Relations, and Orthodox Activism in the 1970s

Monday, March 13, 4 pm ET

At the Center for Jewish History (15 W. 16th St., New York, NY) and livestreamed on Zoom

Hadas Binyamini, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Graduate Fellow

Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Michigan

This paper follows over two decades of Orthodox central Brooklyn approaches to crime and safety, showing the emergence of popular Orthodox politics and development of self-conscious cross-sectoral Orthodox activism.

About the Speakers:

Hadas Binyamini is a PhD candidate at the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and the Department of History at New York University, where she studies the history of Jewish politics, American conservatism, and social movements in the late 20th century. Her dissertation follows the grassroots activism and lobbying of diverse Orthodox communities in the U.S. from the 1960s to the 1990s. She holds a Masters degree in Archives and Records Management from the University of Toronto. Her reviews of recent works in Jewish studies have been published by Public Books and +972 Magazine. Based on research in the American Jewish Historical Society’s Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement, she recently published an article in Jewish Currents' special issue on Soviet Jewry. She is excited and grateful to be part of CJH’s academic community. 

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Michigan. An historian of American Jews, she specializes in 20th-century urban history. Three of her monographs form a trilogy, moving from studying second generation New York Jews (At Home in America) to examining the lives of Jewish American soldiers in World War II, and culminating in a history of migration that carried big city Jews to Miami and Los Angeles after the war (To the Golden Cities). Her book, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation served as the basis for a documentary of the same title. Most recently, she has explored the formative encounter of Jews and American cities in the Urban Origins of American Judaism, and written a comprehensive history of New York Jews, Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a People and a City. Her forthcoming book, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Mid-Century New York (2023) extends her interest in urban Jewish history to photography. Currently she serves as editor in chief of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, a 10-volume anthology of original sources translated into English from the biblical period to 2005, selected by leading scholars.

To register to attend and receive a pre-circulated paper please email miriam@cjh.org. Please specify whether you are attending in person or on Zoom and please read the paper in advance of the webinar.