Virtual Book Talk—"Credit to the Nation"

Join the Museum at Eldridge Street and author Rebecca Kobrin for a discussion of Kobrin’s recent book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873-1930.

Credit to the Nation traces how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Eastern European Jewish immigrant businessmen revolutionized the businesses of migration, banking, and real estate to create financial opportunities not only for American Jewish immigrants but for many immigrant groups excluded from American banking. These men, like Sender Jarmulowsky, who built the Eldridge Street Synagogue, have much to teach us today about the roles immigrant Jews played in reshaping New York City and its financial infrastructure.

Please see the Zoom link in your order confirmation email. This program is entirely virtual.

Registration for this Zoom program is pay-what-you-wish. The following are suggested amounts for each ticket type:

Adults $12
Seniors $10
Students $8

REGISTER HERE

CLICK HERE to purchase Credit to the Nation.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Full Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she is also the co-director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. She was also a member of Columbia’s Antisemitism Task Force. In 2026, she was awarded Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. She has taught at Yale University, Harvard University, Reichmann University, Rutgers University, and Brooklyn College.

Rebecca Kobrin teaches and researches in the fields of American Jewish history, immigration studies, business history, and urban studies, specializing in modern Jewish migration. Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, (Indiana University Press, 2010) was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize for best book in modern Jewish history concerning the Americas (2012). She then became interested in American Jewish economic history and edited Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), and is co-editor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Her most recent book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873-1930 (Harvard University Press, 2026), looks at the lost world of immigrant banking. Bringing together scholarship and archival sources in five languages, she restores a lost chapter in American economic history and Jewish history, in which Eastern European Jewish immigrants reshaped the businesses of migration, banking, and real estate by providing credit and other financial services.

She is also a lead investigator of the award-winning digital humanities project, Mapping Historical New York, which visualizes the demographic and spatial changes transforming New York City between 1850 and 1940. Mapping Historical New York breaks new ground in its content, scale, and methodology. The project visualizes census data and shows how New York’s rise as the world’s most populous city in the world was a spatially contested process. Through mapping census materials from 1850, 1880, 1910 and 1940, when migration transformed New York City, Mapping Historical New York provides data for all five boroughs, capturing the entire city like never before.

She lectures widely on topics related to American Jewish history, East European Jewish migration and US immigration history. Her writing has also appeared in popular newspapers such as The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, and The Jerusalem Post.

About the Museum at Eldridge Street:
The Museum at Eldridge Street is housed in the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a magnificent National Historic Landmark that has been meticulously restored. Opened in 1887, the synagogue is the first great house of worship built in America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Today, it is the only remaining marker of the great wave of Jewish migration to the Lower East Side that is open to a broad public who wishes to visit Jewish New York. Exhibits, tours, public programs, and education initiatives tell the story of Jewish immigrant life, explore architecture and historic preservation, inspire reflection on cultural continuity, and foster collaboration and exchange between people of all faiths, heritages, and interests.