"Jewish Activism" is topic of lecture on Tuesday

Shaul Kelner, associate professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University,” visits Youngstown State University on Tuesday, Oct. 24, to lecture on “Forgotten Lessons of Jewish Activism: How American Jews Mobilized to Fight for Human Rights in the USSR (and Saved American Jewry in the Process).”

The free lecture is 5 p.m. at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor (Steel Museum), 151 W. Wood St., Youngstown. The event is open to the public and is sponsored by the YSU Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies at YSU.

For more information, contact Jacob Ari Labendz, professor and director of the YSU Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies, at jlabendz@ysu.edu or 330-941-1603.

Kelner is past director of Vanderbilt’s Program in Jewish Studies. His research focuses on the sociology of contemporary American Jews and the intersections of culture, politics and religion in Jewish life. Kelner has been a Fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute for Advanced Studies and of the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies.

In his lecture, Kelner will explore the structural and symbolic dimensions of the American Soviet Jewry Movement's mobilization strategies, drawing lessons for activism and community-building today. American Jews spent much of the Cold War era rallying to protect Jews trapped and persecuted in the Soviet Union. Their efforts succeeded in paving the way for a mass exodus of over a million and a half people. But rousing American Jews to take action was no easy task, and resulted only from the tireless work of numerous activist groups, including the nation's first Soviet Jewry Movement organization, founded in Ohio in 1963.