Presented by Society for History of Czechoslovak Jews
Thursday, FEBRUARY 24, 2011 at 7.00 pm – Lecture 2
“The Emergence of Slovak Jewish Identity in Interwar Czechoslovakia”
Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Purdue University
Before the Interwar period, there was no “Slovak” Jewry. This talk considers the emergence of a distinctive Slovak Jewish collective identity among the Jews of the territory of Slovakia, formerly northern Hungary, as they reoriented themselves in the new state of Czechoslovakia after the First World War. This process took place through Jewish national politics, communal architectural enterprise, and how they did – and did not – commemorate their war dead.
Rebekah Klein-Pejsova is Jewish Studies Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University. After completing her M.A. degree at the Central European University in Budapest she earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2007. She is currently working on a book manuscript concerning the dynamics of Jewish nationality and citizenship in Interwar East Central Europe. Her article, “Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars’: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho) Slovakia,” was published in the November 2009 issue of the journal Association of Jewish Studies Review.
The event takes place at Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, New York, NY.