Professor Rebecca Kobrin’s “Credit to the Nation” Featured in The Wall Street Journal

Professor Rebecca Kobrin’s new book, Credit to the Nation: East European Jewish Bankers and American Finance, 1870–1920, was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. The review highlights the book’s account of how Jewish immigrant bankers extended credit to new arrivals while helping shape economic and communal life in the United States during a period of mass migration.

Published by Harvard University Press, Credit to the Nation explores the networks of trust, migration, finance, and entrepreneurship that connected Eastern Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

IIJS Professor Rebecca Kobrin Receives 2026 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching

Prof. Kobrin delivers remarks at the IIJS 75th Anniversary Celebration

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is delighted to share that Professor Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, has been named a recipient of Columbia University’s 2026 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.

This prestigious honor recognizes exceptional dedication to teaching and mentorship across the University. Professor Kobrin was selected following strong endorsement from the faculty nominating committee, which praised her thoughtful, often innovative approach in the classroom and the profound and lasting impact she has had on her students. Testimonials from past and present students spoke to the depth of her mentorship and the meaningful influence of her teaching on their academic paths and personal development.

We warmly congratulate Professor Kobrin on this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and mentorship.

"A Woman Is Responsible for Everything" Receives Two National Jewish Book Awards

We are delighted to share that A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2025), co-authored by IIJS Co-Director and Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society Elisheva Carlebach and Prof. Debra Kaplan (Bar-Ilan University), received two National Jewish Book Awards! The book was awarded the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies.

In A Woman Is Responsible for Everything, Carlebach and Kaplan draw on meticulous research and extensive archival and material sources to reveal Jewish women’s lives across three centuries, revealing how women were central to the economic, religious, and communal life of their communities. Richly documented with archival images, the work illuminates the lives of women whom scholars have long overlooked, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a broader understanding of the Jewish past.

To learn more about the award, please visit the Jewish Book Council’s announcement page. Additional information about the book is available through Princeton University Press.

Dr. Alexandra Birch Awarded Douglas Chalmers Graduate Scholars Lectureship

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is proud to share that Dr. Alexandra Birch, a Mellon Teaching Fellow at the Harriman Institute and Lecturer in History, has been awarded the prestigious Douglas Chalmers Graduate Scholars Lectureship by Emeritus Professors in Columbia (EPIC). This honor recognizes outstanding graduate students whose work exemplifies intellectual distinction and a strong commitment to teaching and public engagement.

The Selection Committee commended Dr. Birch for a distinctive scholarly voice that merges performance and research, with particular attention to recovering music lost during the Holocaust and honoring composers whose legacies have long been overlooked.

Congratulations to Dr. Alexandra Birch on this well-earned recognition.

New Research by Professor Rebecca Kobrin on October 7 and Its Impact on Israeli Students at Columbia

We are proud to share recent research by IIJS Co-Director Professor Rebecca Kobrin, examining the events and aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. This work offers critical insight into the surge of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on U.S. college campuses, including the experiences of Israeli students at Columbia.

Her study examines how the October 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing campus activism affected Israeli students’ sense of belonging at Columbia University, arguing that the concept of “anti-Israelism” is essential to understanding these dynamics fully. 

Read her research in detail, linked below:

Anti-Israelism, Social Media and the College Campus in the Aftermath of October 7: The Case of Columbia

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

IIJS Co-Director, Elisheva Carlebach, receives AJS Gender Justice Caucus Mentorship Award

Elisheva Carlebach, the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society and IIJS Co-Director, has been honored with the Association for Jewish Studies “Gender Justice Caucus Mentorship Award.” This award recognizes outstanding service in the profession through the mentorship of women scholars in Jewish Studies.

A leading professor in early modern European Jewish history, Professor Carlebach is celebrated for her transformative impact as a mentor, particularly her dedication to supporting women in the field. She has been a tireless advocate for emerging female scholars, offering guidance on navigating institutional gender biases and fostering their academic and personal growth. Her commitment to mentoring extends far beyond academic achievements, as she inspires confidence, nurtures intellectual curiosity, and creates supportive networks that uplift the next generation of scholars. Professor Carlebach’s unparalleled dedication has shaped countless careers and left an indelible mark on Jewish studies.

The Institute Welcomes Alumni Back to Campus for Reunion 2023

On Friday, June 2, the Institute hosted Columbia alumni for a special event at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Elisheva Carlebach, Co-Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, and Michelle Margolis, the Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, discussed the history of Jewish Studies at Columbia and walked guests through centuries-old selections from the Alexander Library of Jewish Studies.

Dr. Margolis brought out an exciting array of treasures from the Library’s collections, sorted into the following categories:

• New Acquisitions

• Columbia History

• Jews in the East (Near and Far)

• Women

• Yiddish

• Early Printing

Columbia alumni and families from all backgrounds had the opportunity to directly explore and interact with manuscripts as old as the fifteenth century that represented the diversity of Jewish history and culture throughout time and across the world.

Faculty in the News: Remembering Paula Hyman and a Review

• Rebecca Kobrin and other noted scholars reflect on the legacy of “the Feminist Scholar Who Remade Jewish Studies”, Paula Hyman, who taught at Columbia from 1975-1982. Read here.

• The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750–1880, edited by Elisheva Carlebach, is critiqued in the Jewish Review of Books.

Institute in the News

• Yale University Press published The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750-1880, edited by Prof. Elisheva Carlebach. This volume covers a momentous period, described by Carlebach as a time “in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity.” The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization is comprised of The Posen Digital Library (PDL), available at posenlibrary.com, and a 10-volume print anthology of Jewish culture.

• Read Prof. Clémence Boulouque’s New York Times book review of Norman Lebrecht’s Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947.

• Francine Klagsburn, author of Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel, shared her thoughts on the Institute’s conference History and Memory: The Legacy of Yosef H. Yerushalmi in the New Jersey Jewish News.

• Tablet Magazine shared our upcoming screening of The Pawnbroker followed by a Q&A with Prof. Maura Spiegel.

The Semester of the Jewish book

Read about the teaching collaboration between Prof. Elisheva Carlebach and Norman E. Alexander Jewish Studies Librarian Michelle Chesner. Read more here.