How does genre both enable and hinder self-understanding? This is the question at the heart of Abraham Rubin’s talk on Jewish conversion in a time of crisis. “Conversion and Catastrophe in German-Jewish Émigré Autobiography” illuminates the spiritual journeys of four German-Jewish converts, including the prominent writer Alfred Döblin. Applying psychoanalysis, disability studies, and autobiographical theory to the life writing of the four men, Rubin offers new avenues for conceptualizing the Jewishness of historical subjects who disavowed their ties to Judaism against the backdrop of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

The author of scholarly articles and the monograph “Conversion and Catastrophe in German-Jewish Émigré Autobiography” (2024), Rubin is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton.

This event is generously sponsored by Joel and Nancy Dimsdale.

About the Series

The Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series is an education and outreach program co-sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies Program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and can be accessed online.