Davis Center: Jewish Odessa: Trade, Community, and Culture in the Port City

Date: 

Wednesday, May 2, 2018, 4:15pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CGIS South, S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA

Drawing on Odessa Recollected, a new collection of her Odessa articles, the historian Patricia Herlihy will discuss how in many respects Jews adopted Odessa as their city more than did any other inhabitants. Present there only in small numbers at the beginning, Jews came to form one third of Odessa’s population by the 1917 Revolution. While some Greeks and Italians made fortunes in the grain trade, only Jews boasted that one could “live like God in Odessa.” At the same time, pious Jews declared that the fires of hell burned around the city. What were the patterns and products of the Jewish experience? Why did Jews gravitate so much to the port city? Odessa is known for pogroms, Babel’s Moldavanka, Zionism, music, and humor, all part of an intricate myth of the city. Yet there is more to discover about the vibrant urban presence of Jews in Odessa over the past two centuries.

Patricia Herlihy has been an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies since 1973. Currently Professor Emerita of History, Brown University and Adjunct Professor, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Herlihy is the author of numerous publications, including the books Odessa Recollected: The Port and the People (2018); Odessa: A History, 1794-1914 (1986); The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia(2002); Vodka: A Global History (2012). 

Speaker(s): 

Patricia Herlihy, Professor Emerita, Brown University; Center Associate, Davis Center
Chair: Maxim D. Shrayer, Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies, Boston College; Director, Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry; Center Associate, Davis Center

Cosponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry has been made possible with the generous support of Genesis Philanthropy Group.

For more information, please call 617-495-4037.