Encore - Jewish Responses to the Shoah: Insights from Personal Memoirs

Recording on 05/25/2021 at the East Brunswick Public Library. EAST BRUNSWICK—East Brunswick Public Library (2 Jean  Civic Center Drive) continues its Holocaust Remembrance Program series  with "Jewish Responses to the Shoah." This online lecture will be held  on Tuesday, May 25, at 7:00 pm. Dr. Glenn Dynner, Professor of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College,  will present the lecture "Jewish Responses to the Shoah: Insights from  Personal Memoirs." There is a long line of memoirs about the Holocaust  that compel us to "meditate that this came about," in the words of Primo  Levi. For it is people's lives, rather than structures or data, that  truly bring home the realities of evil, trauma, heroism, and moments of  impossible humanity. This talk surveys major Holocaust memoirs by Levi, Elie Wiesel, and  more. The program includes a discussion of “The Remnant,” written by  Michael Kesler, an East Brunswick resident who seems to have made all  the right choices yet endured the paradoxical trauma of survival. Glenn Dynner is Professor and Chair of the Religion Department at  Sarah Lawrence College. His work explores the religious and social  history of Polish Jewry. He is author of “Men of Silk: The Hasidic  Conquest of Polish Jewish Society” (Oxford, 2006), which was awarded the  Koret Publication Prize; and “Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor & Life  in the Kingdom of Poland” (Oxford, 2014). He is a Fulbright scholar, a  member of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, and co-editor of  the journal Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. He is on the editorial boards of East European Jewish Affairs, Journal of Jewish Identities, and POLIN: A Journal of Polish Jewish Studies. As a Guggenheim fellow, Dynner will study how the mass mystical  movement known as Hasidism became politicized in early 20th-century  Poland. His monograph, tentatively titled “Exile of the Spirit: Hasidism  in Interwar and Nazi-occupied Poland,” will chart Hasidism’s emergence  as both a political force and a culture of resistance in a context of  coercive assimilation, anti-semitism, and, eventually, Nazi-sponsored  genocide. "Jewish Responses to the Shoah" is produced by Kesler. Since his  retirement in 2006, Kesler has written extensively of his and his late  wife's experiences during World War II. This is the seventh event that  he has planned in a series that chronicles the history and culture of  Jewish populations in Europe before the Holocaust. "Our aim is to commemorate and celebrate the rich historical and  cultural contributions of Jewish communities, beginning with that of  Ukraine before its tragic extinction by the Germans," said Dr. Kesler,  producer of the series. "It is our way of honoring and keeping alive  their legacy as time marches on so that these once-thriving  civilizations, from whom many among us are descended, are never  forgotten." The program is sponsored through a partnership of Kesler, the East  Brunswick Public Library Foundation and East Brunswick Public Library.