This series continues the exploration of the Diaspora, focusing on the history and culture of Jews in four European communities. All are part of the saga of European Jewish prosperity, achievement, persecution, exile, destruction and return. Many American Jews have Russian roots as it once had the world’s largest Jewish population including imperialistic holdings in the Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and parts of Poland. Germany was the home of Ashkenazi Judaism and today has a surprisingly growing Jewish community including Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to pre-Christian Rome and has continued, despite periods of extreme Papal persecution and expulsions and Mussolini. From the 16th Century diaspora and the Iberian expulsion until the Holocaust, the Netherlands was mostly a bastion of tolerance and a center of Jewish life during a long period, a time when Amsterdam was known as “Dutch Jerusalem.”

LECTURES:
1. Russia: Beyond the Pale- Medieval, Imperial, Soviet & Post-USSR
2. Germany: Prosperity, Integration, Destruction and Rebirth
3. Italy: Surviving Emperors, Popes, and Mussolini 
4. The Netherlands: Conversos, Commerce, Occupation and Remembrance