Oregon: Eastern Europe turn-of-the-century, Oct. 20

Portland's Jewish Genealogical Society will host Assistant Professor Natan Meir (Portland State University) in "Not your Grandfather's Synagogue," on Tuesday, October 20.

The meeting begins at 7pm at Ahavath Achim Synagogue.

Meir's program focuses on religious and secular Eastern European Jews in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to increase understanding of our ancestors' way of life.

He will address the shift from traditional religious practice among East European Jews to a more complicated religious landscape, including the Eastern European version of Reform and secularism.
The Lokey Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies, Meir holds a PhD (Columbia University), taught at the University of Southampton (UK), and was a postdoctoral fellow (Hebrew University, Jerusalem).

His academic interest focuses on 19th-20th-century Eastern European Jews' social and cultural history. His book "Kiev: Jewish Metropolis, 1861-1914," will be published by Indiana University Press. His next project will explore the lives of widows, orphans and the disabled in 19th-century Russian and Polish Jewish communities, tentatively titled, "Jewish Marginals in Eastern Europe."

For more information, directions and area resources, see the JGSO website.