What Can the New York Syrian Community Teach Us About Sephardim in America?

Mar 24, 2021 | 1:00 pm

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Dr. Mijal Bitton (Photo by Michael Datikash/The New York Jewish Week)

Robert Seltzer 2021-2022 Lunch Lecture Series Presents:

What Can the New York Syrian Community Teach Us About Sephardim in America?

Cohosted with Hunter Hillel

Sephardic Jews who immigrated to America from Muslim-majority countries are woefully understudied in the scholarship of American Jews.

In this talk, Dr. Mijal Bitton will share findings from her research on the Syrian Jewish Sephardic community in Brooklyn. Dr. Bitton will demonstrate that a careful study of groups such as this one destabilizes normative assumptions about the relationship between America and its Jews.

Dr. Mijal Bitton is a Scholar in Residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She is a sociologist of American Jews with a research focus on the experiences of contemporary Sephardic American Jews from Muslim-majority countries. Mijal is the co-founder and Rosh Kehillah of the Downtown Minyan and was selected in 2018 for inclusion in New York Jewish Week's '36 under 36'.