All events in the Neilsen Lecture Series in Judaic Studies are free and open to the public. These events bring Jewish scholars, dignitaries, and public figures to campus to speak about tolerance, diversity, history, culture, and current events. They are made possible by the generosity of the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation.
Between the 1890s and 1930s, Argentina, following the United States and Palestine, became the main destination for Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews seeking safety, civil rights, and better economic prospects. In the period between 1918 and 1939, sixty thousand Polish Jews established new homes in Argentina. They formed a strong ethnic community that quickly embraced Argentine culture while still maintaining their unique Jewish-Polish character. In this talk, Mariusz Kałczewiak will speak about the mosaic of entanglements that Jewish migration wove between Poland and Argentina. He will present how ethnicity evolves among migrants and their children and will analyze the dynamics that emerge between putting down roots in a new country and maintaining commitments to the country of origin.
Mariusz Kałczewiak is a social and cultural historian of modern Eastern Europe and Latin America. One of the leading scholars in Latin American Jewish Studies, currently Kałczewiak develops a new research focus on Jewish Gender Studies. He holds a PhD degree from Tel Aviv University (2017) and a MA degree from the University of Warsaw (2011). His first book Polacos in Argentina. Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture appeared in 2020 with the Alabama University Press.