Scott Spector: A Czernowitzer Challah: Jews and the Austro-Hungarian Empire around 1900

Professor Scott Spector's Lecture now Available Online
Image of Scott Spector

In case you missed Professor Scott Spector's fascinating talk, the recording is now available! Spector's lecture was presented by the Center for Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for Austrian Studies, Dept. of German, Nordic, Scandinavian & Dutch, and the Center for German & European Studies.

Spector's talk examined how, until World War I, Austria-Hungary encompassed a vast territory from Czernowitz to Trieste and from Salzburg to Transylvania. What held these diverse peoples and places together? This question occupied the monarchy in its time, as well as those looking back on the pre-war world. The realm’s two million Jewish residents—the emperor’s most loyal subjects, it was said—were similarly far-flung in place and diverse in character. Yet they were held together as Habsburg Jews not only by religion, synagogue architecture, and food, but also in ways barely visible to themselves. This lecture, using the connections among these communities, will explore a few of these Jewish worlds to help us understand the particularity of Austria-Hungary as a whole.

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