CRRC, American Councils and ARISC are pleased to announce the 2nd session of the Spring 2025 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
This week’s session will be in a hybrid format at CRRC office and via Zoom (with speaker delivering virtually).
“The Bonds of Intercommunal Solidarity: Georgian Jews, Russian Jews, and the Imperial Russian State”
Aaron Schimmel, Stanford University and ARISC Fellow
Wednesday, 29 January, 2025 at 18:30 Tbilisi time (9:30 am EST)
The Russian Jewish community’s size, culture, language, economic structure and pedigree were among the characteristics that informed the Russian state’s attitude and policies toward Russian Jewry. These very same qualities informed Russian Jewry’s self-perception. The far less studied Jews of Georgia, on the periphery of the Empire, exhibited attributes that were so vastly different from those of Russia’s Jews that they profoundly unsettle our notions of what it meant to be Jewish in the Russian Empire. These two populations, so unalike, nonetheless found themselves together under Russian Imperial rule. Throughout the nineteenth century encounters between individuals in these communities effected a complex, dynamic, and multidirectional process of relationship building. What are the factors that shaped the development of this intercommunal relationship? How did the actions of the Russian state and the choices of individual Jews interact to shape attitudes about each other? What larger lessons can be derived about the formation of intercommunal solidarity within the Russian Empire? This talk, built on the speaker’s dissertation research, traces multiple themes through Georgian Jewish history in the nineteenth century with an eye on how these phenomena impacted attitudes and relations between Georgian and Russian Jews.
Aaron Schimmel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Stanford University studying the history of Jews in the Russian Empire, with a focus on Jewish politics and identity. His current research, for his dissertation, concerns the development of intercommunal relations between Georgian Jews and Russian Jews in the Empire. He is currently conducting archival research in Tbilisi with funding from the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC).
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Works-in-Progress is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the CRRC office at Chavchavadze Ave. 5 and online. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talks will not be recorded, and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing recordings as well. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.
