Dear Reader,
I landed in NYC yesterday morning for an event tonight with the Leo Baeck Institute and Thomas Mann House at the Center for Jewish History.
If you’re in the city, I’d love to see you! Come say hi.
6:30PM.
Get tickets (it’s free)
To celebrate tonight’s event and the wonderful work of the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History, I want to share with you a really special historical artifact that I found doing archival research as I was finishing my biography of Hannah Arendt.
Not only does the Leo Baeck Institute have the original copies of Aufbau, containing Arendt’s writings from the 1940s (which you can see here), but they also have the Youth Aliyah Records in the Hadassah Archives.
The biggest biographical gap in Hannah Arendt’s life is from 1933-1941. Forced to flee Nazi Germany, she made her way to Paris where she mostly worked for Youth Aliyah. And hiding in the records of the Leo Baeck is her personal notebook from her time in exile in Paris.
You’ll see she was doing a lot of administrative work, collecting items, organizing classes and events, preparing to help Jewish children escape Nazi Europe. (Note: it is handwritten and in German)
I hope you enjoy taking a look through it.
Spend some time playing around in the archives!
Who knows what else you might find.
And here’s the reading schedule for The Man Without Qualities for October.
Sign-up here:
Until soon,
Sam
Though I cannot make it for The Man without Qualities, I am looking forward to Moby Dick. I was telling a friend about it and he wants to join, so I will be gifting him a subscription!
Welcome back, Sam! Thanks for the Musil reading schedule - very helpful. I'm not seeing the times for the meetings. Kindly advise. Thank you, Risa M