The Jewish Inn in Polish Culture

Panel Discussion Admission: Free Registration is required. Register

The Jewish inn was a center of economic and social life in Polish lands before the World War II. While its primary role was to provide hospitality, it also functioned as a multifaceted hub for business, leisure, and religious festivities, reflecting its vital role in the community. In The Jewish Inn: Between Practice and Phantasm, editors Halina Goldberg and Bożena Shallcross present 11 articles that delve into the inn's significance as a symbolic incubator of Jewish cultural possibilities. From exploring the intricate connections between music, dance, and other arts within the inn, to highlighting the increasing prominence of women in the inn's family dynamics, this collection offers an interdisciplinary look at this central pillar of Jewish Polish culture.

Join YIVO for a panel discussion with Goldberg and contributors Glenn Dynner, Beth Holmgren, and Eliza Rose about this book.

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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

Halina Goldberg is Professor of Musicology and Director of the Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is Director of the digital project, “Jewish Life in Interwar Łódź,” and the author of Music in Chopin's Warsaw.

Glenn Dynner holds the Jay Berkowitz Chair in Jewish History at the University of Virginia. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (Oxford University Press, 2006); Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor & Life in the Kingdom of Poland (Oxford University Press, 2014); and The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2024). He is also Editor of the journal Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies.

Beth Holmgren is an American literary critic and a cultural historian in Polish and Russian studies. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University. Before coming to Duke, she taught at the University of California-San Diego (1987-1993) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993-2007). She earned her B.A at Grinnell College, and two master's degrees and her doctorate at Harvard University.

Eliza Rose is Assistant Professor and Laszlo Birinyi Sr. Fellow in Central European Studies in the Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She researches art, film, and science fiction from Poland and East Central Europe. Her in-progress book project, Working the Base: Alloys of Art and Industry in the People’s Poland, is a cultural history of art and film in the industrial workplace in late-socialist Poland. She is an author of science fiction and alumna of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her stories can be found in Interzone and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and have been translated into Polish and French.