15th Annual Solomon Memorial Lecture with Eddy Portnoy, author of "Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press." Presented by The Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University with support from the Gus and Libby Solomon Lecture Series Endowment.

Eddy Portnoy has an MA in Yiddish from Columbia University and received his Ph.D from the Jewish Theological Seminary. A specialist in Jewish popular culture, he has published in numerous academic journals and also in The Forward and in Tablet Magazine. He currently serves as Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. 

An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, "Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press" mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With true stories of Jewish drunks, murderers, wrestlers, psychics and beauty queens, all plucked from the pages of Yiddish dailies, Eddy Portnoy reveals unusual and unexpected aspects of Jewish urban life. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.

Save the date of Jan. 30, 2020 and plan for an entertaining evening.
Details forthcoming at pdx.edu/judaic