Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930

Co-sponsored by American Jewish Historical Society What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? In this lively history, Rebecca Kobrin chronicles the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Arriving from the Russian Empire and settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting fellow Jews, so they could purchase passage to the United States and, after arriving, obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Credit to the Nation traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry, but also revolutionized the US financial industry. Join us for a discussion with Kobrin about this book, led by Annie Polland. Buy the book: https://yivo-institute.myshopify.com/... About the Speakers Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. She works in the fields of immigration history, urban studies, business history, Eastern European history and American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She received her B.A. (1994) from Yale University and her Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Pennsylvania. She served as the Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University (2002-2004) and the American Academy of Jewish Research Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University (2004-6). Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2010) was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize (2012). She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), Salo Baron: Using the Past to Shape the Future of Jewish Studies in America (Columbia University Press, 2022), and is co-editor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Annie Polland is a public historian, author, and President of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where she served as Vice President for Programs and Education from 2009 to 2017. Prior to her return to the Tenement Museum, she served as Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society. She is the co-author, with Daniel Soyer, of Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration (New York University Press, 2013). She served as Vice President of Education at the Museum at Eldridge Street, where she wrote Landmark of the Spirit: The Eldridge Street Synagogue (Yale University Press, 2008).