How has U.S. citizenship worked—and not worked—for Jews? Join NYU historian Lila Corwin Berman, author of Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship, and Temple Micah congregant, journalist, Emily Tamkin, for a lively conversation about the history of Jewish citizenship and rights in the United States. How have courts, policymakers, and the public persistently asked what it means to be Jewish under the law? And how are today’s debates the same as or different from ones in the past?
All are welcome – no registration is required to attend.
Please note: this event will take place in-person only; no livestream option is available.
Lila Corwin Berman is the Paul & Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and the director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. She received her B.A. from Amherst College and her Ph.D. from Yale. Berman is author of Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship (Princeton, 2026); The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion Dollar Institution (Princeton, 2020), as well as Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago, 2015) and Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (California, 2009). Her articles have appeared in several scholarly journals, and she has also written guest columns for the Washington Post, the Forward, and the Jewish Week. She serves as the chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society.
Emily Tamkin currently serves as Vice President of Temple Micah. A journalist and author, Emily writes and reports on Jewish identities and politics, US foreign policy, and illiberalism. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, the New Republic, Politico, Slate, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Previously, Emily covered foreign affairs as a staff writer at Foreign Policy and BuzzFeed News and US politics, foreign policy, and society at the New Statesman. Emily is the author of The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society, published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, in July 2020, and Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities, published by Harper Books in October 2022.