Levy Series – Professor Jonathan Pollack

Join us for the Levy Summer Series! Presented in partnership with Jeffrey C. Levy, each event will feature an engaging scholar, artist, or community leader speaking over a broad range of topics of interest. The presentation will be followed by an elegant lunch. This is a ticketed event. Scholarships are available.

“Reuniting Families and Recruiting Workers: The Industrial Removal Office in Madison, 1900-1920”
Professor Jonathan Pollack

Chair, History Department, Madison Area Technical College, and Honorary Fellow, Center for Jewish Studies, UW—Madison

Schedule:

10:30-11am: check-in

11:00-12:30pm: presentation

12:30-1:30pm: lunch

Nakoma salad, dinner rolls & mini muffins
Choice of entrée: Baked Cod with Toasted Spinach-Lemon Butter Sauce orVegetable Phyllo topped with marinara and crème fraiche, roasted red potatoes, French beans and baby carrots
Dessert: Turtle sundae

Many members of Madison’s Jewish community have come here to take a particular job. Others followed family members who did the same. In an earlier era, people came from Russia to Madison when earlier-arriving relatives sent money home and paid for their passage. But in the early 20th century, the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) sent people from New York to Madison, reuniting families who lacked money for train fare, and matching Russian Jews with job opportunities in Wisconsin’s capital city.

This talk will describe the IRO’s growth and decline nationally and in the Madison area, as well as the experiences of Jewish Madisonians who worked with this short-lived social-service organization.