Closing Borders: Immigration and World War I

The rise of the United States and Israel as centers of Jewish life is closely tied to immigration. Yet the success story of Jewish immigration obscures the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe who were displaced during and after the First World War. Wherever they turned they faced closed doors. The United States shifted to a restrictive immigration regime in 1921, implicitly targeting Eastern European Jews. Most other countries also restricted immigration. Many Jews who were stranded in permanent transit after 1918 perished in the Holocaust because they could not reach safe havens.

In his new book "Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe" Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State Univ.) sheds light on the journeys of Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. He argues that the experience of permanently displaced Jews after 1918 deserves more attention and shows parallels to the situation of unwanted refugees and migrants today.

For this event Tobias Brinkmann will be joined by José C. Moya (Barnard College/Columbia University), a leading specialist of modern Latina America and global migration.

This event will be held in person at the Center for Jewish History. If you cannot attend the live event, it will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

About the Speakers:

Tobias Brinkmann is the Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Penn State University, University Park, PA and Director of the Jewish Studies program. Publications: Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024). Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2012) – finalist for the National Jewish Book Award 2013; (Editor), Points of Passage: Jewish Transmigrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880-1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2013).

José C. Moya directs the Forum on Migration at Barnard and the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia, and teaches courses on global migration, Latin American history, the Jewish immigrant experience, and anarchism. Professor Moya has authored more than fifty publications, including Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, a book that received five awards and was the subject of a special forum in the journal Historical Methods for its contributions to migration studies;  World Migration in the Long Twentieth Century, co-authored with Adam McKeown; The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, an edited volume on Latin American historiography; and Immigration Culture and Socioeconomic Development in the United States, Canada, and Latin America (2018).