Jindrich Toman, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will guide the audience through select points that mark legal and cultural emancipation of Bohemian Jewry in the decades between the so-called Josephinian Decrees of the 1780s and the Monarchy’s liberal constitution of 1867. We will trace the culture of the disappearing ghettoes, attempts at a Czech-Jewish dialogue in the 1840s, the revolutionary year 1848, and conclude with the liberal 1860s.

Jindrich Toman is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been following an academic path defined by languages and cultures of Central Europe, initially focusing on linguistics and gradually shifting his research interests towards cultural history and visual culture. A concurrent line of interest focuses on Jewish culture in Bohemia. He teaches courses in the area of literary and cultural studies, including “Jewish Prague.” 

Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $5. RSVP online through Eventbrite.

The event is organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York, in cooperation with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York with the support of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and BBLA.