Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora [Paperback]

The mass migration of East European Jews and their resettlement in cities throughout Europe, the United States, Argentina, the Middle East and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries not only transformed the demographic and cultural centers of world Jewry, it also reshaped Jews' understanding and performance of their diasporic identities. Rebecca Kobrin's study of the dispersal of Jews from one city in PolandBialystokdemonstrates how the act of migration set in motion a wide range of transformations that led the migrants to imagine themselves as exiles not only from the mythic Land of Israel but most immediately from their east European homeland. Kobrin explores the organizations, institutions, newspapers, and philanthropies that the Bialystokers created around the world and that reshaped their perceptions of exile and diaspora.

In addition to original and illuminating research, Jewish Bialystock and Its Diaspora is to be commended for its lucid style of writing. Kobrin knows how to tell a story, arousing the readers curiosity from the very first page.Kobrin's wide-ranging analysis draws on huge and impressive variety of sources and many of the scholarly debates that her work relates to are very well explained . . . [This book] is a rare contribution to contemporary debates about migrationThis thoughtful, strikingly original work of scholarship possesses the added value of being readable (and, one hopes, appreciated) by an audience beyond specialists in the field. . . . In sum, this book's contribution to Russian, east European, American, and 'diapora' studies is truly extraordinary. Vol. 70.3, Fall 2011This well-researched and innovative study is both an account of the history of Jewish Bialystok and of the way its diaspora was mobilized to support Jewish life in the town from abroad. . . . It . . . provides a new way of examining the relation between East European Jewish emigrants and the lands from which they set out to make new lives elsewhel³5