Events

Ester Frumkin: A Jew at War with Judaism

Prof. Elissa Bemporad, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center

(Moderators: Elaine Wilson and Noa Tsaushu)

By analyzing the words and deeds of Ester Frumkin, who in the wake of the Bolshevik rise to power rejected her Bundist past to join the Communist Party and bring the Revolution to the Jewish street, Bemporad will explore her role in forging the new secularist Soviet Jew. As a teacher, editor, author, and riveting orator, over the course of the 1920s and 1930s Frumkin helped forge the revolutionary minds of thousands of Jewish youth, imbuing them with a new anti-religious ethos.