Jewish Relief Crossing Borders: Lithuanian Famine Case Study, 1860s-1870s

Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture Fellowship in Baltic Jewish Studies (The Abram and Fannie Gottlieb Immerman and Abraham Nathan and Bertha Daskal Weinstein Memorial Fellowship in Eastern European Jewish Studies, the Abraham and Rachela Melezin Memorial Fellowship and the Maria Salit-Gitelson Tell Memorial Fellowship) Admission: Free

This lecture considers the extensive transnational relief networks forged by two border committees of the French Alliance Israélite Universelle: Isaac Rülf’s Memel Committee for Aid to Russian Jews and Isaac Bamberger’s Königsberg Committee. While Isaac Rülf contributed to the rescue over 30,000 Jews in the Kovno gubernia alone, Bamberger’s relief, adoption and migration campaigns saw dozens of French, Prussian, English, and American activity offering assistance to victims of the Baltic Famine in Lithuania. Accentuating the interplay between the European Jewish communities in the late 1860s through to early 1870s, drawing connections stretching from England to the far regions of Central and Eastern European shtetls, and encompassing the United States, this lecture will provide introductory insights into the patterns of Jewish internationalism on a more general level, as well as mass mobilisation and transnational solidarity.

About the Speaker

Milena Zeidler is a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of History at Oxford University, a Random House Graduate Scholar, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, Digital Fellow, “Cultures of Knowledge: Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750,” and the 2015-2016 recipient of the YIVO Fellowship in Baltic-Jewish Studies (The Abram and Fannie Gottlieb Immerman and Abraham Nathan and Bertha Daskal Weinstein Memorial Fellowship in Eastern European Jewish Studies, the Abraham and Rachela Melezin Memorial Fellowship and the Maria Salit-Gitelson Tell Memorial Fellowship).