Presented by Joseph Weisberg
Ph.D. Student, Department of History, Brandeis University
Charleston holds a special place in American Jewish history. It was home to the nation’s largest Jewish community as late as 1820 and is often cited as the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America. Yet, the city occupies a different place in African American history. According to some estimates, approximately 40% of the Africans who were forcefully trafficked to North America entered through Charleston Harbor. While the slave trade officially ended in 1808, enslaved African Americans did not disappear from the urban landscape.
This lecture considers the historical reality that these worlds coexisted, and American Jews found themselves on the white side of the color line in a slave society. In this talk, Joseph Weisberg will share new insights about how Dr. Jacob de la Motta and his extended family created a network that supported each other in the slave economy. This network included near and distant kin and spanned across generations.
Join us as he considers what this network looked like, why it was significant, and the extent to which it was Jewish in character.
Thank you to Bobbie and Mike Goldman for sponsoring this lecture.
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Joseph Weisberg studies American Jewish history and is particularly interested in Jews' relationship to slavery. His dissertation will investigate the ways that Jews' ethnic or religious identities may have influenced their interactions with slavery in North America. More broadly, his research interests include the history of slavery, Southern Jewish history, and African American-Jewish relations. Joseph also values making his scholarship accessible to the general public and is active as a public scholar. He has appeared in a documentary film, co-authored a project on the history of a local public library, and is currently an Associate Research Fellow with the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Project.
Thank you to Andrew R. Ammerman for sponsoring our Spring 2024 program lineup.
He dedicates the semester’s learning in loving memory of Josephine and H. Max Ammerman, Stephen C. Ammerman, and Avi West.