Talk by Mariusz Kalczewiak, recipient of the Jewish in the Americas fellowship

As part of his exploration of the cultural and social significance of travel and travel writing in Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, Kałczewiak’s talk will focus on the Polish-Jewish author Peretz Hirshbein’s Yiddish travelogue From Far Lands: Argentina, Brazil, June-November 1914. Published two years later, in 1916, the book also included one of the first accounts of Jewish immigration to Argentina. Through the examination of Hirschbein's depictions of urban Jewish life in Buenos Aires, the agricultural settlements, and interactions between Jews and non-Jews, Kałczewiak will demonstrate how the Yiddish travelogue aided Eastern European Jews to conceptualize the Americas, those faraway lands where they planned to emigrate.