Women’s Initiative for Jewish Studies (WIJS) at Young Israel of New Rochelle is proud to present Dr. Shari Rabin on Tuesday, November 15 at 8 p.m. on Zoom. She will be the third speaker of the 2022-2023 season in the monthly scholarly programming offered by WIJS at YINR.

Rabin will speak on the topic “Dissent, Providentialism and Slavery: A New Interpretation of Early Charleston Jewish Life.” The 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina promised freedom of worship to “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters,” establishing a novel setting for Jewish life in the English colonies. Drawing on research for her new book project on Jews in the American South, Rabin will piece together the history of the Jewish community that emerged in 18th-century Charleston. These Jews lived within a broader Atlantic world, but also began to forge religious and social lives fundamentally shaped by this distinctive Lowcountry port city.

Rabin is associate professor of Jewish studies and religion and chair of Jewish studies at Oberlin College. She is the author of “Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America” (NYU Press, 2017), which won the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies, and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She received a PhD in religious studies from Yale University in 2015.

All WIJS programming is open to women and men. Please visit www.yinr.org/wijs  to view the complete WIJS 2022-2023 schedule. For more information, to be added to the WIJS email list or for Zoom information, please call 914-636-2215 or email: [email protected]. Individuals on the WIJS mailing list will automatically receive the Zoom information.

By Tamar Croog